Looking for a Kippa alternative that will still be here next year?
If you are searching this, you probably did everything right. You kept your books, you tracked your debtors, you moved off the exercise book like everyone said you should — and then one morning the app would not open and the records were gone. That is a worse outcome than never having started, and it is reasonable to be wary of the next one.
What happened to Kippa
In October 2023 Kippa announced it was shutting down KippaPay, its offline payments and agency banking product, and laid off around 40 employees, with affected staff finishing at the end of November. Reporting at the time attributed the retreat to a mix of pressures on Nigerian SMEs and currency devaluation.
The part that affected ordinary traders came next. From January 2024 the bookkeeping app itself became inaccessible, and business owners who had relied on it reported losing access to their inventory, transactions, debtors, income, expenses, payments and invoices. By 2025 the founders had stepped back from day-to-day operations and the company had downsized substantially.
We are not writing this to be unkind about a Nigerian company that was genuinely trying to solve a real problem, and which many traders liked. We are writing it because the lesson in it is the single most useful thing you can carry into choosing the next tool.
The lesson
The risk was never that the app cost money. The risk was that your records only existed inside it.
What to actually look for in the next one
Four questions, in the order that matters. Ask them of us and of anyone else you are considering.
- Can I get my records out, today, as a file? If the answer is no, or only through support, or only on a paid plan, that is the whole risk right there. Data you cannot export is data you are renting.
- Where do the records live? On your phone alone means a stolen phone is a lost business. On their servers with an export means you survive both a stolen phone and a closed company.
- Who holds the money? If a tool also moves your money, it should say plainly which licensed institution holds it. Vagueness here is the one thing you should treat as disqualifying.
- How does this company make money? A product with no disclosed revenue model is not free. It is unfunded, and unfunded products close. You are entitled to a straight answer.
The honest problem with bookkeeping apps
There is a second reason to think carefully before picking another one, and it has nothing to do with whether the company survives.
Every bookkeeping app, Kippa included, asks the seller to stop after a sale and log it. In a shop, during a rush, with a customer waiting, almost nobody does this consistently for more than a couple of weeks. That is not a failure of discipline; it is a design that competes with the job. It is why so many traders have downloaded one of these apps, used it properly for ten days, and quietly gone back to the notebook.
So if you are choosing again, do not only ask whether the company will last. Ask whether you will still be using it in month three.
How TrustAm is built differently
We do not ask you to log anything. A trader will forget to write in a ledger; a trader will never forget to collect their money. So we attached the record to the payment.
You request money in one sentence on WhatsApp. The customer pays. That single act writes the sale, the customer record and the stock movement, and both sides get a stamped receipt the instant the money lands. There is no app to download, no form, and nothing to remember at closing time — the books stay accurate precisely because nobody is maintaining them.
| A typical bookkeeping app | TrustAm | |
|---|---|---|
| How a sale gets recorded | You stop and type it in | Written when you collect the money |
| Download required | Yes, an app | No — runs inside WhatsApp |
| Where records live | Often on the device | On our servers, exportable as a file |
| Fake alert protection | Records the loss afterwards | Unique account per order + stamped receipt |
| Debt chasing | You do the chasing | Chased automatically on the due date, with a pay button |
| Who holds your money | Usually unstated | A licensed partner bank — we are the interface |
| Price to start | Free trial, then a monthly fee | Free tier, paid business plan later, in naira |
Where we are genuinely weaker
You should know this before you switch, not after.
- We cannot import your old data. Not from Kippa, not from anywhere. You are starting from today.
- Our inventory is lighter than a dedicated stock system. Stock counts itself down from sales, which keeps it accurate, but if you need multi-warehouse transfers or batch and expiry tracking, a purpose-built inventory package will serve you better today.
- We do not build you an online storefront. If selling through a website and social commerce is your main channel, a storefront product is the stronger fit, and we would rather say so than sell you the wrong thing.
- We are younger than the tools you are comparing us to. The fair way to handle that is the export: use us, and take your records with you whenever you want.
Start again, properly this time
The good news about starting over is that you do not need to re-enter a year of history for the books to be worth having. Put your debtors in once — the names in the notebook, what they owe, when they said they would pay — and the assistant starts chasing them for you. Most sellers recover real money in the first week from debts they had quietly written off.
From your first payment request onward, everything else records itself.
Sources
- Exclusive: Kippa lays off 40 employees as it exits agency banking — TechCabal, October 2023
- Kippa shuts offline payment product, to lay off employees in December — Techpoint Africa, October 2023
- Kippa users demand access to lost data as the fintech quietly pivots — TechCabal, February 2024
- Founders exit, website down: the unravelling of Kippa — Launch Base Africa, August 2025