SA fintech startup Peach Payments raises $31 million in Series A funding round

South African fintech startup Peach Payments has raised a US$31 million funding round from Apis Partners to accelerate growth across the continent and expand its product offering.

Founded in Cape Town in 2012, Peach payments provides a complete toolkit to help businesses accept, manage and disburse online and mobile payments. It is the second largest online payment gateway in South Africa and has also expanded to Kenya and Mauritius.

The startup has experienced exceptional growth in recent years, with revenue increasing by more than 650 percent since 2020, and 80 percent in 2022 alone, and it is now planning further expansion after raising $31 million in Series A funding. The investment came from Apis Growth Fund II, a private equity fund managed by Apis Partners, a UK-based asset manager.

Completion of the investment is subject to approval by the Competition Commission of South Africa and customary procedural and closing conditions. Peach Payments’ existing investors include UW Ventures, Launch Africa and AG Ventures.

The company intends to use the investment to accelerate its expansion across new African markets, to deepen its product offering and reinforce its core value proposition for merchants. Apis Partners will leverage its network and experience scaling leading payments companies to support Peach Payments’ growth and geographic expansion.

“At Peach Payments, our mission is to enable African businesses and entrepreneurs to succeed in digital commerce. We want to be the infrastructure team 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 have witnessed incredible growth over the past three years driven by fundamental forces and changes in consumer and business adoption of digital commerce. Across market segments – from retail to digital learning, training and even traditional financial services – we have acquired new customers in almost every vertical. We have built a very strong team of 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 worldwide, and we look forward to exploring exponential opportunities with them.”

Matteo Stefanel, co-founder and managing partner of Apis Partners, said his firm continued to see significant opportunities in African payments as strong secular trends unrelated to annual business cycles – such as conversion from cash to digital and in-store to online payments – persist across key markets.

“We have been impressed by the vision and execution of the leadership team as Peach Payments leverages these trends to bring more end users into the digital economy, a key part of our efforts to democratize access across the continent. We look forward to working with Peach Payments to expand our reach into new markets with innovative merchant solutions,” he said.