An African start-up Union54 is being backed by Tiger Global Management as they enter the race development super app.
As the investors are looking at the continent’s ever-evolving technology-savvy market.
According to Union54 founder and CEO Perseus Mlambo, the new ChitChat app offers secure messaging paired with dollar-based virtual cards that it developed in partnership with Mastercard to allow international transactions is expected to debut in September.
The company plans to provide payments, gaming, dating and food delivery services on their platform. In an interview, Mlambo said users will be able to “send money to each other. They can buy airtime. They can buy bus tickets.”
Union54 was founded in 2021 as a fintech company. The company issues more than three million virtual cards before suspending the service last year and they were hit by a charge-back fraud. The fraud left Union54 with about US$500 000 in weekly bills.
Gabriel Swanepoel, country manager of Mastercard South Africa said in an interview, “We’ve gone through quite an extensive programme to ensure the issues that we were seeing have been addressed.”
