South African API fintech, Stitch raises $21M to build pan-African payment powerhouse

South Africa-based fintech, Stitch has raised $21 million in a Series A funding round to support the company’s plans of expanding to new markets.

The round was led by New York’s Spruce House Partnership. Other participants were PayPal Ventures, TrueLayer, Firstminute Capital, The Raba Partnership, CRE Venture Capital, Village Global, Zinal Growth, and founders of Chipper Cash, Quovo, and Unit.

"Stitch is building critical infrastructure to enable faster, easier, and more secure payments across Africa," Ashish Aggarwal, director of PayPal Ventures. "We believe they will play a significant role in contributing to the overall growth of the fintech space in Africa."

Kiaan Pillay, co-founder and CEO of Stitch said in an official video released by the company, that the company’s goal is to “deepen what we do in the payments sphere and really complete the loop, both pay-ins and pay-outs in the ecosystem.” More so, the company is excited about the other African markets it can expand to.

“We are incredibly fortunate to be supported by some of the best investors, founders and builders in the fintech space globally,” said Pillay. “They are working closely to enable the bloom we’re seeing in financial technology on the continent. Across the hundreds of customers we work with, big and small, we’re witnessing a record pace of development of new financial products.”

While expanding their operations to Nigeria in October 2021, Pillay said the startup would use APIs to help reduce the challenges faced with building across African geographies, leading to the introduction of what he calls “financial graphs” – and infrastructure for building blocks to interoperate across regions, banks, providers, and other financial accounts. It also allows businesses to write code once, launch in different markets, and scale more effectively.

Co-founder and CPO Juniad Dadan also praised the company for being a fintech solutions provider as it helps other fintech and entrepreneurs to deliver more effectively than they normally would. “We are using technology to empower entrepreneurs and start-ups to create more economic value and social impact.”

Stitch, which was founded in 2019, has grown into a multi-million financial technology company. It builds financial infrastructure that links bank accounts, wallet top-ups, e-commerce checkouts, personal and business financial management, and KYC and onboarding. It has a large clientele, including big names like Chipper Cash, Luno, Rentoza, YoCo, and Zapper, all of which are money transfer or mobile payment platforms, except for Luno which is a crypto platform.

To date, the API fintech firm has raised $27 million in funding, following $4 million in February 2021, and $2 million in an extension round in October, which brought its seed round to $6 million.