One of Nigeria's best-known buy now, pay later startups is closing. "Today, with heavy hearts, we are announcing that Klump is shutting down," co-founder and chief executive Celestine Omin wrote in a blog post on Sunday, according to Condia.
Omin started Klump in 2021 with Olufunbi Falayi, its chief product officer. Its main product, Pay with Klump, sat at online and in-store checkouts: the shopper took the item straight away and split the cost into four equal payments, the first at checkout and the rest over three months, with a small interest charge. The merchant was paid in full within one business day, according to Seedcamp, which led its first round.
Why it closed
Condia reports that Klump struggled with three things: getting enough capital to lend, slow integrations with merchants, and constraints set by the lenders it worked with. For a BNPL company that is the whole business. Every instalment plan is a small loan, and the cash for it has to come from somewhere before the customer pays it back.
Who backed it
Seedcamp led Klump's $780,000 pre-seed round in 2022. Other backers included Magic Fund, Kesho VC, Voltron Capital and Assembly Investors, and angels such as Flutterwave chief executive Olugbenga Agboola, Kuda's Babs Ogundeyi, Mono's Abdulhamid Hassan and Bamboo's Richmond Bassey.
"Few things are as fulfilling as watching people use a product that once existed only in your imagination," Omin wrote. The reports do not yet say what happens to customers who are still paying off purchases, or to merchants on the platform.
