Some hours ago, Atsu Davoh, co-founder and CEO of Ghanaian fintech startup, Bitsika, took to Twitter to disclose some metrics the platform hit in 2020.
Launched in 2018 by Davoh and Samuel Boahen, Bitsika is a platform that acts as a wallet for cedis, naira, dollars, and CFA currencies; a social payments platform like Cash App; and a bitcoin & crypto-exchange app.
According to the tweets made by the CEO, Bitsika posted strong growth in revenue, usage, and transaction volume processed. Picking from the provided metrics, here are the nuts and bolts we can share.
For a fiscal year of Jan 1, 2020, to Jan 1, 2021, Bitsika claims to have processed a total of $39,953,115 in transaction volume. The numbers were further broken down to $18,872,474 in deposits, $17,890,807 in payouts (withdrawals), and $3,189,834 in internal peer-to-peer transfers.
"These volumes are from self-determined, successful transactions that users initiated and performed themselves. We did not count system transactions that users did not initiate," one of his tweet read.
In retrospect, Bitsika only processed $974,864 in the fiscal year of 2019 from Jan 1, 2019, to Jan 1, 2020. When compared to FY20 year, that's ~4,000% increase.
Transactions, users and maybe a Davido influence?
Like the payment volume Bitsika recorded, Davoh also points out that the number of transactions performed by the fintech platform were autonomous ones.
A total of 268,430 individual transactions were carried out, up 5,455.26% from its FY2019 result of 4,832 transactions. In addition, 21,418 of the FY2020 metrics were peer-to-peer.
On October 5, Davoh tweeted Bitsika's Q3 numbers from July 1 to September 30, 2020. The Ghanaian fintech startup processed $16,954,746.46 in payment volume, added 17,917 users, and carried out 90,679 successful transactions in that period.
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Three days later, on October 8, the startup announced its partnership with US-born Nigerian pop artiste, Davido (David Adeleke). The partnership sought for Davido to help Bitsika replicate the success CashApp, its US counterpart, had made with hip-hop over the years.
Been working on this for a while ! Glad to finally announce. My first FinTech partnership. This one means so much to me! Our very own cure for all your transfer and payment issues. @bitsikaafrica !! Everyone go download and follow now! pic.twitter.com/cmsn4N3UlE
— Davido (@davido) October 8, 2020
Davoh said that the three-year-old startup hoped to acquire up to a million users riding on Davido's fame and influence. Boahen, the startup's COO, needless to say, was of a similar opinion.
"We decided to go into this partnership with Davido because, in Africa, I don't see anyone with his crazy numbers. I think his social engagement is the best in Africa. This is purely a business decision and we believe with the Davido board, now we can even 10x every single month."
Bitsika followed this announcement with aggressive online marketing, employing strategies such as giveaways to acquire users.
While there are no numbers, in terms of additional users, to show the progress since Q3 2020, Bitsika claims to have 95,509 registered users in total. Of that number, 95% were acquired in 2020.
That said, we'll keep tabs on this to know if the partnership helped drive user growth and transaction volume in the last quarter of 2020.
More growth and fundraising in sight
Another detail which is Bitsika's most staggering progress is its fee revenue. In FY2019, Bitsika made $329 in fee revenue, but for FY2020, it made a 312,235% increase to $1,027,583.
Davoh was quick to point out that this is indeed not the company's profit.
"This number is not our take-home profit. After expenses and payments to our other third-parties are done, what we're left with (net profit) is significantly much less," he said.
At the beginning of 2020, Bitsika had just clocked $1 million in transaction volume. Davoh said the team, at the time, made plans to multiply that number by 10 as well as increase the number of users to 20,000 by the end of the year.
But after hitting $39 million in transaction volume with 95k users, Bitsika has succeeded in overachieving for FY2020, and for Davoh, here's what's next for the startup.
"For 2021, we want to raise our Series A, get our own licensees in all the markets we operate, start our internship program for the design and tech communities, and provide more features in our app. We also want to expand our reach in and beyond fintech."
Bitsika joins a growing list of private fintech companies like BuyCoins and Bundle who have released some financial metrics to the public.
While their numbers often feature user and transaction metrics and hardly reveal ones like profit before-and-after tax like Carbon or other IPO-esque figures, it shows that a continuous culture of transparency is brewing within the space, and hopefully, we'll see more of that.
Featured image: [L-R]: Samuel Boahen (COO), Atsu Davoh (CEO). Source: Twitter http://www.otc-certified-store.com/alzheimer-s-and-parkinson-s-medicine-europe.html https://zp-pdl.com/fast-and-easy-payday-loans-online.php где взять онлайн займзайм под залог недвижимости в белгородеденьги в займ на карту онлайн
