Peach Payments, a South African FinTech startup, has raised a US $31 million Series A funding round from Apis Partners to expand its product offering and accelerate its growth throughout the continent.
Peach Payments, established in 2012 in Cape Town, offers a comprehensive toolkit to assist businesses in accepting, managing, and disbursing payments online and via mobile devices. It has now extended to Kenya and Mauritius. It is South Africa’s second-largest online payment gateway.
After receiving US $31 million in Series A funding, the firm, which has seen tremendous success in recent years with revenue rising by more than 650 percent since 2020 and by 80 percent in only 2022 alone, is now preparing to expand.
The money was contributed by Apis Growth Fund II, a private equity firm run by Apis Partners, an asset manager based in the UK.
The Competition Commission of South Africa’s permission and customary formal and closing requirements must both be met for the investment to be completed. UW Ventures, Launch Africa, and AG Ventures are some of Peach Payments’ current backers.
The company plans to use the money to broaden its product offering, strengthen its fundamental merchant value proposition, and accelerate its expansion across new African markets. To support the growth and international expansion of Peach Payments, Apis Partners will draw on its networks and expertise in expanding top payment businesses.
“At Peach Payments, our mission is to enable African businesses and entrepreneurs to succeed in digital commerce. We want to be the infrastructure layer they build their business on. This was our original vision when we started and is more relevant today than ever,” said Rahul Jain, co-founder, and CEO of Peach Payments.
“We’ve witnessed incredible growth in the past three years 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.”
The conversion from cash to digital and in-store to online payments are just two examples of strong secular trends that are persisting across key markets, according to Matteo Stefanel, co-founder and managing partner at Apis Partners. His company continues to see a significant opportunity in African payments.
“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,” he said.
