Payday, Chipper Cash, appointed as Starlink payment partners
By Oghale Mafuru
Following complaints by Nigerians’ over the inability to purchase the Starlink services locally with ease, the Internet satellite company has announced partnership with two tech companies to facilitate payment transactions in Nigeria.
The two companies are Payday and, Chipper Cash. Payday is owned by Nigerian tech entrepreneur Favor Ori, while Chipper Cash is owned by Ugandan tech tycoon Ham Serunjogi.
Payday’s status as Starlink’s payment partner was disclosed on the company’s website when it said: “For Naira Payments, please use Payday. $43/month for service and $600 for hardware.” The statement appears immediately after a customer specified their service address on Starlink order page.
Since their appointment, the two African fintech companies have raked in N182m in sales, processing purchases of Elon Musk’s Starlink to Nigerians.
Announcing this on their verified Twitter accounts, the two CEOs stated that they have processed Starlink purchases totaling over $400,000 (N184.22m).
Favour Ori stated: “Imagine waking up one day to @SpaceX making your startup their preferred payment partner to collect payments for Starlink in Nigeria, & soon, rest of Africa. 20 months old Payday (Techstars ’21) has become Starlink’s first preferred payment partner in Nigeria 🇳🇬.
“We’ve helped Starlink process over $300k since launch. Just testing the mic”.
Meanwhile, Serunjogi, CEO and co-founder of Chipper Cash, shared on his official Twitter account that users in Nigeria have spent more than $100,000 on SpaceX Starlink kits using ChipperCash Visa cards.
“Chipper users in Nigeria have already spent over $100K paying for their @SpaceX Starlink using their @chippercashapp Visa Cards” he tweeted.
Recall that since Starlink became active in Nigeria, the first country in Africa, prospective users had encountered challenges ordering for the hardware and kits which costs 600 dollars, while the monthly subscription costs 43 dollars. Due to the restrictions on international transactions on naira debit cards, users looking to purchase Starlink would have to pay via a dollar card which will require them to buy dollars from the black market and pay for the product at the black market rate.
At this rate, users will pay $43 at N31, 390 for the initial deposit and monthly subscription, and then the one-time $600 at N438, 000 for the hardware.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) approved the licence of Starlink, a satellite internet constellation operated by SpaceX, to operate in Nigeria as part of efforts to encourage technological advancement and growth of the digital sector in the country.
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