Chipper Cash, a cross-border money transfer platform, has reached a major financial milestone, posting its first-ever quarter of positive free cash flow in Q4 2025.
This announcement was made by the company’s CEO and Co-founder, Ham Serunjogi, who described the development as a significant turning point for the fintech, following years of sustained financial pressure and macroeconomic headwinds.
A review of the company’s free cash flow trend in the chart posted by Serunjogi shows the fintech survived a difficult phase to achieve profitability. From Q2 2023 through most of 2024, Chipper consistently posted deeply negative free cash flow, with particularly steep declines in mid-2023.
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While losses remained persistent, the chart also reveals a gradual narrowing of the deficit from late 2024 into 2025, signaling steady operational improvement. By early 2025, negative free cash flow became noticeably smaller, reflecting tighter cost controls and improved financial discipline. This slow but consistent progress eventually culminated in a small green bar in Q4 2025, representing the company’s first positive free cash flow quarter.
According to Serunjogi, achieving this milestone was especially difficult for a scaled African fintech with hundreds of employees operating globally. He highlighted the impact of currency instability, particularly in Nigeria, where the naira lost over 70% of its value against the US dollar between 2022 and 2025.
This depreciation significantly widened the gap between Chipper’s costs and revenues, forcing the company to move faster than macroeconomic pressures through disciplined execution and efficiency-driven reforms.
The CEO acknowledged that this turnaround required some of the most difficult decisions in the company’s history, including team restructurings over the past two years.
Recall that Chipper Cash’s first round of layoffs came after its leading investor, FTX, a crypto exchange platform, shut down operations. Due to the incident, the fintech saw its valuation slashed from $2bn to $1.25bn according to documents shared by The Financial Times.
The company was also impacted by another similar incident that saw another of its lead investors, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), shut down. According to Bloomberg’s report, the unicorn was weighing options, which included exploring a sale or seeking new investors.
Meanwhile, the company later disclosed that it never sought to be acquired, after the CEO and Co-founder Ham Serunjogi said that the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which was one of its investors, had insignificant exposure on the company.
Fast forward to December 2023, Chipper Cash downsized its workforce again, marking the fourth time that the fintech announced layoffs in a single year. Beyond the layoffs, the company also slashed the salaries of its remaining US and UK employees. These measures, though painful, were necessary to secure Chipper’s long-term viability.
With the fintech’s recent first-ever quarter of positive free cash flow, CEO Serunjogi credited the milestone to the resilience and dedication of the team, emphasizing that the positive free cash flow result is a direct outcome of their collective grit and commitment. He described it as proof that Chipper is not just surviving but building a durable institution capable of serving Africa’s financial needs for decades.
Chipper’s path to sustainability was neither quick nor easy. It was marked by prolonged losses, structural challenges, and tough internal decisions. However, the gradual improvement in free cash flow over time suggests a company that has successfully adapted to its environment and is now entering a new phase of financial stability.
Founded in 2018 by Ham Serunjogi and Majeed Moujaled, Chipper Cash launched with the vision to unlock global opportunities and connect Africa to the rest of the world. Its return to positive free cash flow represents an important step forward.
With a leaner cost structure and sharper operational focus, Chipper appears better positioned to refine its product offerings, strengthen its presence in core markets, and explore selective growth opportunities. For the fintech, the next chapter will be about proving that profitability is not an exception but the new normal.