Stitch, a unified commerce solution that manages online and in-person payments, has secured $55 million in a new funding round led by existing backers.
Among the investors include Raba Partners, a venture capital firm that invests in seed to early-stage companies, which invested $4.2 million. The recent fund secured by Stitch brings the company’s total funding to $101 million since it began operation.
The funding round builds on a period of aggressive growth for Stitch. Recall that the company last month, partnered with Standard Bank’s Shyft, the global money app, to enable instant top-ups on the Shyft wallet via card for customers of any bank in South Africa.
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Today, the Shyft team trusts Stitch to manage their payments, leveraging its reliable card payments platform for instant top-ups. Before Stitch, customers used manual transfer to top up and needed to wait 2-3 days for funds to appear in their wallet. Now they can start moving money instantly, without the need to worry about liquidity.
Also, in January this year, Stitch acquired In-person payments provider ExiPay, expanding its enterprise payments offering to encompass both online and In-person payments through a single, unified platform. With this expansion, Stitch now supports multi-lane retail and omnichannel commerce businesses with a truly unified and reliable platform.
Stitch aggressive expansion reflects a wider trend across the African fintech landscape, where firms are broadening their offerings to solidify market share.
This latest $55 million investment, marks a continued show of confidence from investors. It follows Stitch’s $25 million Series A extension in October 2023, led by Ribbit Capital with backing from PayPal Ventures and CRE Ventures.
Notably, the fundraising comes at a time when global venture capital investment has cooled, placing pressure on startups across the continent. Nevertheless, fintech remains Africa’s most funded startup sector, drawing nearly 50% of total investments in 2023. Stitch’s ability to attract capital despite a tougher funding climate highlights both investor confidence and the pressing need to solve Africa’s payment interoperability challenges.
Still, the road ahead isn’t without obstacles. Stitch operates in a complex, regulation-heavy environment where open banking frameworks vary widely across African markets. Meanwhile, dominant players like Flutterwave have already built expansive footprints across the continent. Industry analysts note that Stitch’s long-term success will depend on execution particularly its ability to scale technology solutions while navigating diverse compliance demands.
Stitch emerged from stealth in February 2021, to enable better, easier, and more efficient access to the financial system for businesses and the customers they serve.
In a short amount of time, the company has grown from a data-focused player to a payments provider with Pay by bank as its first offering, into a full PSP, payments orchestration system, in-person payments solution, and much more bolstered by a talented team that has also grown to support our ambitions. The payments platform consistently looks for more ways to support the clients we work with and solve more challenges in South Africa’s payments ecosystem.
Over the last few years, Stitch has developed and launched a host of payment methods and innovations at lightning speed, including 24/7, 365 payouts to better meet the needs of its customers. Today, Stitch is an end-to-end provider serving clients with industry-leading customer support and help from its technical solutions team each step of the way.
The company has developed solutions that address challenges from fraud, to data evaluation, to payment orchestration and more, with a platform designed to offer industry-leading reliability and redundancies to ensure the highest level of transaction success. Currently, Stitch is focused on solidifying its presence in South Africa and selectively entering other high-growth African markets. CEO Kiaan Pillay emphasized the company’s broader vision in a recent statement: “The goal is to build the rails that power Africa’s digital economy.”
Continued backing from investors like Stitch’s latest round not only reinforces its market position but also raises expectations. As it scales, the fintech’s challenge will be to transform Africa’s fragmented payment landscape into a more seamless, interoperable system one transaction at a time.