Hover, a company that specialized in providing developers an easy way to integrate USSD in their apps (USSD sessions run in the background while in the foreground a user gets a good-looking interface), is scaling down operations.
The scale of the scaled-down operations is such that the company is effectively letting go of all its employees effective 1st May with founder and CEO Ben Lyon saying he’ll be the only one staying on on a voluntary basis to handle administrative duties.
According to Lyon, Hover failed to “achieve scalable economics” and hasn’t succeeded in its fundraising efforts.
Lyon comes short of saying the obvious, that they are shutting down the company because he intends to keep the lights on at Hover to continue providing support to existing users. These users, however, will have to pay with Hover now placing a price tag on the access of its Android SDK and enforcing billing starting mid-next month (15th May).
The company will, from now going forward, rely on the open-source community for further updates to its products and services with Stax, its payments app, leading the way.
The turn in fortunes for Hover comes in the wake of several other such developments recently. Chipper Cash has let go of most of its team members while Lazerpay, a Nigerian crypto payments startup, announced its closure just a few days ago.
