Dash CEO takes ‘indefinite administrative leave’ as Insight-backed startup conducts financial audit TechCrunch

Prince Boakye Boampongfounder and CEO short lineOffering another cost community in Africa with linked wallets that enables interplay between cellular cash and financial institution accounts, it’s allegedly briefly suspended pending a monetary irregularity investigation, in response to folks with direct data of the scenario.

Boampong based Ghanaian fintech in 2019 and have become certainly one of Africa’s well-known serial entrepreneurs after the joint launch. Oh My God DigitalA YC-backed Ghanaian media initiative in 2016. Kenneth KinyuaHe’s the previous CEO of Kopo Kopo, a Pan-African funds firm who not too long ago joined Sprint for a regional management position in East Africa. Kinyua takes on the position of interim CEO.

Final March, Ghana-based and New York-based Sprint Raised $32.8 million in fairness Amongst others from Perception Companions, International Founders Capital, 4DX Ventures and ASK Capital. Sprint’s preliminary spherical, valued at simply over $200 million, was the second-largest deal of its form after PalmPay’s $40 million in 2019, in response to sources. The $20 billion large is featured in Flutterwave’s Sequence C spherical in 2021.

Earlier than Sprint raised over $30 million, he initially wished to lift 1 / 4 of that cash, about $8 million, as a seed spherical. It had achieved this by buying almost 200,000 customers by October 2021, and producing $250 million in buying and selling quantity. In March 2022, 5 months after the primary seed tranche, Sprint’s complete buying and selling quantity exceeded $1 billion and acquired a million from Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria, Boampong informed TechCrunch in a March interview. This implies a 4-fold enhance in transaction quantity and a 5-fold enhance within the variety of customers in 5 months. The fast development mixed with the 2020-2021 fintech increase spanning the primary quarter of 2022 has allowed Sprint to reopen and entice new traders because it quadruples its seed spherical.

Looking back, the consumer and transaction quantity development that Sprint reviews on this brief time period is probably not solely surprising as the expansion figures are considerably totally different from what TechCrunch often sees when it comes to how different shopper fintechs in Africa are scaling.

Certainly, sources have claimed to TechCrunch that Boampong was suspended as CEO for making monetary misrepresentation. Nevertheless, in a joint assertion, Sprint’s board gave TechCrunch a unique perspective on the previous chief’s present scenario. A board spokesman stated the CEO was positioned on “indefinite administrative depart on January 24, 2023 pending the corporate’s judicial monetary audit,” with out offering any remark or offering particular context about Boampong’s misconduct. Sources say the audit outcomes could possibly be introduced inside a month.

In appointing the interim CEO, the board said that it “trusts Mr. Kinyua’s management and Sprint’s potential to ship on his mission to create a unified funds system designed to enhance effectivity and accessibility in how Africans transact with digital foreign money.”

In the meantime, sources acquainted with the corporate’s inner operations declare that executives repeatedly hid monetary data throughout the firm, describing an irregular office the place staff resign and are voluntarily fired. TechCrunch reached out to Boampong for remark. The founder, who bought his multimillion-dollar stake in a secondary sale, a observe involving a handful of African founders in the course of the VC increase over the previous two years, didn’t, in response to folks with direct data of the scenario. Do not reply.

As a unified cost software that mixes cellular cash and conventional financial institution accounts, Sprint simplifies transactions for shoppers and companies. Fintech’s playbook is much like Visa or Mastercard in that it routes funds by banks and telecommunications corporations no matter who points them. Thus, customers from totally different African international locations Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya can join their financial institution or cellular cash accounts to Sprint, pay their payments and ship and obtain cash from different customers whereas the platform performs foreign money conversions. The four-year-old fintech earns income from transaction charges, financial savings, overseas change charges, invoice funds and subscription charges.

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