Grindstone Backs South African Payments Startup Sticitt In Seed Funding Round

Sticitt, a South African payments startup, has raised an oversubscribed round of seed capital to continue its growth.

Sticitt raised US$250,000 in funding in 2020 and has now secured a strategic investment from a consortium led by Nustate Capital Ventures in a seed round that was 1.5X oversubscribed. Grindstone Ventures, Nustate Capital Ventures, Hlayisani Capital, Realm Digital, and GalloProvincialis are among the investing consortium’s members.

Team sticitt
Team Sticitt

“Financial education is crucial for economic growth and gives someone the chance of a better tomorrow using money as an enabling tool in their lives. Our first product, Sticitt Pay, a cashless payment platform, offers schools an integrated smart payment system that is safe and easy to use and is the first important step in our journey to simplify education-related payments and building toward a youth banking alternative. This funding round will help us reach more schools, parents, and learners and enable our expanded product roadmap centred around education-related payments and youth banking,” said Theo Kitshoff, CEO of Sticitt.

Dr Eugene van Rensburg, a partner at Hlayisani Capital and a director at Sticitt, stated that South Africa has one of the lowest household saving rates in the world, which has a direct impact on the country’s ability to generate meaningful GDP growth and makes people more susceptible to economic shocks.

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“Using user-centric financial technology to make the fundamentals of personal finance more accessible to the youth, and their families are essential in improving the socio-economic outlook for all South Africans. With this investment, Sticitt is able to accelerate its product development, schools deployment and significantly contribute to the upliftment of learners, their parents, and schools,” he said.

A Look At What The Startup Does

Sticitt, co-founded in January 2018 by Theo Kitshoff, Mitch Dart, and Dennis Wevel, simplifies payments within the South African education market through its simple-to-use payment system, Sticitt Pay, which provides alternative payment solutions to cash, formal banking, and card-based payments for niche communities.

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert. 
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard. You can book a session and speak with him using the link: https://insightsbyexperts.com/view_expert/charles-rapulu-udoh