TrueLayer and PayPal invest in South African startup Stitch

Posted: 14th February 2022

South African-based fintech API startup Stitch has sealed a $21 million Series A funding round led by The Spruce House Partnership, with investments from TrueLayer and PayPal Ventures among others.

Stitch offers a suite of APIs that reduce the effort required for businesses to connect to their users’ financial accounts and enable bank-to-bank payments without leaving the existing app interface. The infrastructure-led approach supports a number of different use cases, including KYC & onboarding, personal and business financial management, lending, wallet top-ups, e-commerce checkouts.

Stitch emerged from stealth in February last year with $4million in seed funding led by Raba and firstminute capital, and has since opened an office in Nigeria.

In addition to Spruce House Capital, new investors include PayPal Ventures, TrueLayer and Zinal Growth. Existing investors including firstminute capital, The Raba Partnership, CRE Venture Capital and Village Global also participated, as did a number of prominent fintech founders from Chipper Cash, Quovo and Unit.

The company says the new funding will be used to expand the team, launch new product offerings and enter new markets across the continent.

“We are incredibly fortunate to be supported by some of the best investors, founders and builders in the fintech space globally,” said Stitch co-founder & CEO Kiaan Pillay. “They are working closely with us to enable the boom we’re seeing in financial technology on the continent. Our goal is to help fast-growing fintech and embedded finance companies more easily launch increasingly innovative and tailored products, expand into new markets and optimise their solutions – so they can grow even faster.”

He says that in the last quarter alone, the firm record 44% month-on-moth customer growth and a 72% MoM increase in linked financial accounts on the platform. Ashish Aggarwal, director at PayPal Ventures, comments: “Stitch is building critical infrastructure to enable faster, easier and more secure payments across Africa. We believe they will play a significant role in contributing to the overall growth of the fintech space in Africa”

Categories: Payments