Union54, an African start-up backed by Tiger Global Management, is entering the race to develop super apps as investors look to tap the continent’s increasingly technology-savvy market.

The new ChitChat app, which may debut in September, offers secure messaging paired with dollar-based virtual cards that it developed in partnership with Mastercard to allow international transactions, according to Union54 founder and CEO Perseus Mlambo. It also plans to provide payments, gaming, dating and food delivery services on the platform.

In addition to messaging, users will be able to “send money to each other. They can buy airtime. They can buy bus tickets,” Mlambo said in an interview.

Super apps such as China’s ubiquitous Alipay and WeChat and Careem in the Middle East provide users with a one-stop shop for services and payments, and have been successful in parts of the world with large unbanked populations. In Africa, where cash dominates transactions, companies including MTN Group and Safaricom have already introduced similar products in some markets.

Union54, founded as a fintech company in 2021, issued more than three million virtual dollar cards before suspending the service last year after it was hit by charge-back fraud.

The company said it addressed the issue, which involves errant customers who would pay for an item, receive it, then request a refund. Fees for debit orders that failed because of insufficient funds in users’ accounts also left Union54 with weekly bills reaching US$500 000 before it halted the service.

Seed round

The charge-back saga created headaches for Union54’s clients, to whom it had issued Mastercard’s virtual cards. “We’ve gone through quite an extensive programme to ensure the issues that we were seeing have been addressed,” Gabriel Swanepoel, country manager of Mastercard South Africa said in a separate interview.

MTN Group, Africa’s biggest mobile network operator, started its Ayoba app four years ago and has 25 million monthly active users. Safaricom of Kenya has more than five million Google Play store downloads of its M-Pesa super app launched in 2021. Founded in the same year by Vodacom and Alibaba, VodaPay app has 3.3 million registered users.

Union54 will provide seed capital for the project from the $12-million it raised last year through a Y Combinator seed funding round led by Tiger Global. It plans to retain 40% ownership of ChitChat and cede shareholding to local companies in the markets it seeks to operate, initially in Angola, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, according to Mlambo.

Fintech companies and their offerings, including super apps, in Africa are set to thrive as cross-border trade within the continent grows

In Tanzania and Uganda, Union54 is partnering with Nala, a money transfer service that also went through Y Combinator. It will work with PayPay Africa in Angola and Mlambo’s Zazu Africa payments app in Zambia, he said.

Fintech companies and their offerings, including super apps, in Africa are set to thrive as cross-border trade within the continent grows. In August, McKinsey & Co forecast African fintech revenues could grow by eight times to reach $30-billion by 2025.

“There’s a lot of money invested in fintechs, but there’s nobody who’s been able to make money out of it,” Mlambo said. “Precisely because they’ve only covered two or three different markets at most.” — (c) 2023 Bloomberg LP