East Ventures-backed fintech firm JiPay winds down

JiPay, a fintech firm focused on domestic workers, will shut shop, founder Dayana Yermolayeva said in a LinkedIn post.

Founded in 2020, JiPay offers a prepaid Mastercard service that can be used by domestic helpers to buy groceries and supplies for their employers. The company raised more than a million US dollars in a seed round led by East Ventures earlier this year.

JiPay executives (from left) tech lead Chin Rui Chew, product operations manager May Thu Lwin, CEO Dayana Yermolayeva, and growth lead Shiva Raju / Photo credit: JiPay

Yermolayeva said JiPay still had cash on hand and posted a 300% month-on-month growth in revenues and remittance volumes in August. However, much of the company’s growth was attributed to cashbacks, which “wasted a lot of money, created little loyalty, and attracted far too many cashback gamers.”

Additionally, JiPay said it was unable to generate enough remittance revenue in Singapore to raise funds in a series A round and support expansion plans in the United Arab Emirates.

Though JiPay explored a host of alternatives to provide financial services to migrant workers and household helpers, including micro insurance and bill payments, to stay afloat, the company decided to pull the plug as the other products “did not move the needle in terms of ARPU (average revenue per user).”