Company: Payhippo is an AI-driven platform that provides loans and other banking services to underserved small business owners in Nigeria.
HQ Location & Year Founded: Lagos, Nigeria, 2020
Founder: Zach Bijesse, Co-founder and CEO, is a mission-driven entrepreneur who started Payhippo after having worked as an investment officer at Lidya, another Nigerian fintech company. Zach was previously a math teacher in a New York public charter school and he is a graduate of UNC Chapel Hill.
Funds Raised and VC Investors: $5 million from Aidi Ventures, Beta.Ventures, Digital Financial Service Innovation Lab, Dispatch Ventures, EarlyBird Venture Lab, Envision Accelerator, Flying Doctors Healthcare Investment Company, Future Africa, Goodwater Capital, Ground Squirrel Ventures, Healthcap Africa, HoaQ, Hustle Fund, Launch Africa Ventures, Mercy Corps, Metis Capital Partners, Prodigio Capital, Proximity Ventures, Serunjogi Ventures, Sherpa Ventures, TEN13, Velocity Digital, VentureSouq, Ventures Platform, XRM Media, Y Combinator
Where did the idea for Payhippo originate?
We are nearly four years old as a company now. I had been working in fintech in Nigeria and felt that the market for SME financing in Nigeria was not being well served. I decided to rethink how loan origination could be done through technology. It was then that I met my co-founder Uche Nnadi and we started building our first product.
What is the key problem that Payhippo intends to solve?
We are making SME loans, payments, and other financial services faster and hassle-free. We originally offered a loan product with a 24-hour turnaround for approval. We got that down to 12 hours and now to just 3 hours. We saw an opportunity to tackle more challenges in small business banking. We acquired a microfinance bank, built our own systems, and today are able to provide a much smoother experience for customers.
How are you most differentiated as a service?
Anyone can lend money to a small business. What was missing was how to do it in a way that the business could get money the same day quickly and reliably. SMEs function much differently from large corporations because their working capital needs are more sporadic. And most SMEs don’t have a department dedicated to liaising with their banks - it’s typically just the SME owner who’s responsible for this. We have continued to lead through speed and reliability, and we stay ahead of the pack by offering a variety of financial services that allow our clients to send and receive money seamlessly.
What are the company’s key accomplishments to date?
We have made over 34,000 business loans in our four years. Our collections rate has been above 97% for almost all of those 4 years, which is a testament to the quality of the market here in Nigeria.
What lies ahead in the plans for Payhippo?
We are rolling out a full ecosystem of services from microfinance to debit and credit cards, point-of-sale solutions, more insurance products, and more. All of this is being done with the goal and vision to make small business banking more seamless and hassle-free.
Ron’s Take
Small and medium size businesses make up the economic heartbeat of much of the world. Nowhere is that truer in emerging economies such as Nigeria and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet traditional banks have often been unwilling to innovate and serve such clients with modern, elegant solutions to their financial needs. This is what has triggered the emergence of neobanks and microlending institutions. Payhippo is leading the way in Nigeria, one of the planet’s most populous and fastest-growing nations. As the boom continues, Payhippo will be playing a key role in ensuring that SMEs have the same opportunities to grow as they would anywhere else around the world.