South African-founded fintech Peach Payments has secured $31 million Series A funding from equity fund manager Apis Growth Fund II.
The fund is managed by Apis Partners LLP (Apis Partners), a UK-based asset manager, which announced the investment today, cautioning completion of the transaction is subject to approval from South Africa’s anti-trust authority – the Competition Commission.
If approved, the deal will see Apis Growth Fund II joining existing shareholders that include UW Ventures, Launch Africa and AG Ventures.
Peach Payments was founded by Jain and Andreas Demleitner in 2012 in Cape Town, South Africa, offering a payment gateway to local online merchants. It expanded to Kenya in 2018 and to Mauritius in 2021. Peach Payments’ goal since it was founded has been to be the online payment infrastructure provider that helps businesses scale. In achieving this goal, the business has focused on its merchants’ customers as much as the merchants themselves.
The company provides a toolkit that enables merchants to accept, manage and make payments via mobile and the web. Services offered include online payment acceptance, pay-outs (disbursements), and subscription solutions across a variety of payment types including cards, electronic funds transfer, digital wallets, mobile money, and Buy Now Pay Later options, among others.
“We continue to see significant opportunity in African payments as strong secular trends that aren’t related to annual business cycles – such as the conversion from cash to digital and in-store to online payments – persist across key markets,” Matteo Stefanel, co-founder and managing partner, Apis Partners, said.
He adds: “We have been impressed by the vision and execution of the management team as Peach Payments capitalises on these trends to bring more end-users into the digital economy, a key part of our drive to democratise access across the continent. We look forward to partnering with Peach Payments to expand its reach into new markets with innovative merchant solutions.”
The fintech has experienced significant growth in recent years, with revenue increasing more than 650% since 2020, and 80% in 2022 alone. Peach Payments intends to use the investment from the Fund to accelerate its expansion across new African markets. As it says, ‘to deepen its product offering, and to reinforce its core merchant value proposition’.
According to Rahul Jain, co-founder and CEO of Peach Payments, the company’s growth has been driven by “fundamental forces and shifts in consumer and business adoption of digital commerce”.
“Across market segments – from retail to digital learning, fitness, and even traditional financial services – we’ve onboarded new clients in almost every vertical. We’ve built a very strong team with exceptional operators, and I am excited to partner with the team at Apis and take this business to where it deserves to be. The Apis team brings an incredible wealth of experience in fintech across the globe, and we look forward to exploring exponential opportunities together with them,” Rahul added.
