Fusepay goes live after securing the Central Bank of Seychelles licence to operate as a Payment Service Provider

Fusepay has processed its first live transaction in Seychelles. This comes shortly after the fintech received its Payment Service Provider (PSP) licence from the Central Bank of Seychelles (CBS).

In Seychelles, electronic payments trail significantly behind cash and cheque usage. This discrepancy was a key focus of the country’s National Payment System (NPS) Vision Strategy for 2016–2020. In 2015, the volume of cheques cleared vastly exceeded that of electronic transactions, with 791,245 cheques processed compared to just 101,130 SWIFT payments and 58,529 Seychelles Electronic Funds Transfer (SEFT) transactions.

According to a Government directive, all banks and the Seychelles Credit Union (SCU) must stop issuing cheque books to individual customers, effective January 1, 2025. Cheque issuance for businesses will end by September 1, 2026. Processing and acceptance of cheques will completely cease for individuals on December 1, 2026, and for businesses on January 1, 2027.

Founded in June 2024, indigenous startup Fusepay was born to modernise business payments in Seychelles and other Indian Ocean islands, such as Mauritius and Réunion. “Fusepay began from the frustration of watching our parents struggle to make even simple digital payments in their retail and wholesale businesses,” CEO and co-founder Vidhyasahar Thiyagarajan told Condia. “Manual processes made employee fraud far too easy, and we have seen businesses shut down because of it. We built Fusepay to give businesses a faster, safer, and more transparent way to operate.”

Investors like Hustle Fund and Everywhere Ventures bought in and backed Fusepay with a $350,000 pre-seed. “At Everywhere Ventures, our core ethos is that exceptional founders exist everywhere. Seychelles and the African and Indian Ocean islands are no different,” says Scott Hartley, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Everywhere Ventures. “With Fusepay we saw both a strong team and billions of dollars in business transactions that need to be modernized. We see this as a powerful opportunity to dominate a smaller market and then expand into adjacencies that address broader customer needs or into markets that are similarly underserved.”

The company planned to use its pre-seed to support its licensing process, which typically requires applicants to show proof of shareholder funds and make infrastructure investments. “This funding marks a key milestone in our journey to become a licensed Payment Service Provider (PSP) in Seychelles”, Thiyagarajan told Condia in August 2025.

At the time, its flagship product, FuseCheq—offering scheduled digital payments, which mirrors a key behaviour of cheques (post-dating), was in development. On November 14, Fusepay received its approval from the CBS to operate as a licensed Payment Service Provider (PSP) and on the 19th, it processed its first transaction.