Nigerian startup, Payhippo, has raised $3m in seed funding. The company said it was planning to use this funding to source for talents to optimise its technology as it speeds up effort to extend speedy credit to more small and medium-sized enterprises in the nation.
This funding round comes after the $1m pre-seed funding the company raised earlier this year.
Chioma Okotcha, the Co-founder and Chief Operations Officer, said the company was looking to hire more engineers and data scientists.
She said, “We capture our data from the loans we issue, and more talent in the team would allow us to optimize our technology to serve our customers better.”
According to the company, it disburses short-term loans in less than three hours. Okotcha added, “We really focus on keeping this under three hours, and making sure that businesses can get the money they need when they need it.
“Ours is also a product that works for the SMEs in terms of a flexible repayment structure,”
The firm said it was applying its own credit scoring formula that uses different SME data to determine the value of loans to give out, adding that the loans were disbursed through mobile phones.
The company added that it had disbursed about 5,000 loans valued at $1m since its launch in 2019. The company said it has a repayment rate of 97 per cent and has earned $64k in revenues.
