Stitch API - Afrikan Heroes

South African Fintech Stitch Launches Crypto Payment Option Amidst Soaring Cryptocurrency Adoption

November 21, 2023

Stitch, a fintech company based in South Africa, has recently unveiled a novel cryptocurrency-based payment solution. This new offering, titled “Pay with crypto,” empowers customers to make payments directly from their cryptocurrency wallets. The introduction of this payment method aligns with the escalating popularity of cryptocurrency in the local market, where an estimated 7.7 million South Africans are reported to possess cryptocurrency to date. This trend is mirrored on a global scale, reflecting an increasing interest in utilizing cryptocurrency for transactions involving goods and services.

In an official statement, Stitch highlighted that the implementation of this payment solution enables local merchants to accept cryptocurrency payments from customers seeking to purchase products and services. Junaid Dadan, the President of Stitch, remarked, “Cryptocurrency adoption in South Africa has been one of the highest in the world. There’s a massive audience that would prefer to use their crypto to make payments. We’re excited to offer Stitch clients an opportunity to reach and serve this audience, without the need to take on direct volatility risk, thanks to our ‘Pay with crypto’ method.”

Stitch, established in February 2021 as an application programming interface fintech startup, operates with offices in Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Lagos, Nigeria. The company specializes in creating infrastructure that facilitates businesses in connecting to users’ financial accounts, ensuring seamless transactions. Among its notable enterprise clients are companies such as MultiChoice, MTN, The Foschini Group, Standard Bank’s SnapScan, and Yoco.

The ‘Pay with crypto’ option presented by Stitch allows customers to either make a deposit or complete a transaction using cryptocurrency stored in their VALR or Binance wallets, or alternatively, send Bitcoin or Ethereum directly. Accessing this payment method is straightforward: customers choose ‘Pay with crypto’ at the checkout, select their preferred wallet and cryptocurrency, and Stitch handles the conversion of cryptocurrency to ZAR, settling the merchant in ZAR on the subsequent business day.

Stitch emphasizes that any business embracing digital payments can seamlessly integrate ‘Pay with crypto’ into its operations. This includes online marketplaces, e-commerce enterprises, gaming and trading platforms, as well as local and international travel service providers. Blake Player, Head of Growth at VALR, expressed enthusiasm about the collaboration, stating, “We’re excited to see yet another partner building on top of the VALR Pay API. The Stitch integration expands the options VALR customers have to spend crypto balances in South Africa in the e-commerce market. The interest we’ve had in working with the VALR Pay product has been amazing, and we’re expecting high growth in the volume of crypto payments as it becomes more widely accepted.”

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

Founders Back South African API Startup Stitch As It Lands $21m In Series A Round

February 14, 2022

Stitch, one of Africa’s leading players in the development and operation of API s, has raised $21 million in Series A funding. This round of funding was spearheaded by The Spruce House Partnership, a hedge firm based in New York. PayPal Ventures, TrueLayer, firstminute capital, The Raba Partnership, CRE Venture Capital, Village Global, as well as fintech founders and firms including TrueLayer, founders of Chipper Cash, Quovo, and Unit, and Guillaume Pousaz’s Zinal Growth, all participated in the round.

“We sort of view the broader financial ecosystem as a bunch of different nodes–bank accounts, merchants such as fintechs or end-users–which are all intrinsically connected,” Stitch CEO Kiaan Pillay said in an interview. “Often, we think about the fact that these connections between geographies and institutions don’t exist yet. And a lot of what we try to do is to bridge those connections and to make those connections ubiquitous.”

This announcement comes after Stitch raised $4 million in a secret round in February 2021, which was a prelude to the $2 million extension round it received four months ago, bringing its seed round to $6 million. Stitch has raised a total of $27 million to date.

The funds will enable Stitch to expand its team across offices in Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Lagos, as well as develop new product offerings and explore new markets across Africa, according to the company.

Why The Investors Invested

The startup continues to gain traction. Pillay, who co-founded Stitch with Natalie Cuthbert and Priyen Pillay, didn’t provide an update on the metrics, but did say that since the product’s launch in April, Stitch has witnessed a 104 percent month-over-month growth in payments value. In Q4 2021, the platform had a 44 percent month-over-month increase in customers and a 72 percent increase in linked financial accounts.

“We’re proud of the partners and customers we have here as we continue to deepen the payments product and look at monthly and recurring payments, which are interesting feature sets for us,” said Pillay.

“We recently had a few customers go live in Nigeria, which has been very exciting for us. We just offer payments there but are eager to deepen the products. We will look at adding data and identity this year, as well as deepening the payments set similarly to how we have it in South Africa.”

“We have been following startups in Africa for many years. Our diligence was very clear that this is one of the most talented teams on the continent, and we are excited to be a part of what they are building at Stitch,” said Ben Stein, co-founder of The Spruce House Partnership.

A Look At What The Startup Does

The South African API fintech enables businesses to build, optimize, and scale financial products.

Stitch is used by business clients for KYC and onboarding, personal and business financial management, financing, wallet top-ups, and e-commerce checkouts, among other things. Businesses can access consumer transaction histories and balance data, verify account information, and perform fraud checks using the platform’s data and identity solutions. One-click pay-ins and payouts are possible with the payments product, which allows for bank-to-bank transfers.

Wallet-based firms like Chipper Cash and Luno, embedded finance providers like ImaliPay, subscription platforms like FlexClub, and payment aggregators like Yoco are among the company’s customers.

Stitch debuted its payments solution in South Africa in April 2021, and the next six months saw a 50 percent increase in payments volume month over month. Stitch launched its payment service in Nigeria in October, with plans to process $10 million in monthly payments by the end of the year.

With the new capital, the company wants to also develop a “financial graph” ecosystem across Africa, according to a statement made by the company.

The financial graph, according to the company, is an architecture for financial building blocks that enables businesses to develop code once, launch in numerous markets, and scale more quickly thanks to interoperability between geographies, providers, banks, and other forms of financial accounts.

This graph is viewed by Stitch in three stages. The first is the sheer infrastructure play of integrating financial and bank accounts with an API, which it launched from stealth. The second is to attract merchants and businesses so that use cases and applications can be built on top of the infrastructure. The final step is to encourage end users to link their accounts with these businesses.

“On the high level, people moving from cash to digital for the very first time causes more fragmentation. Our view is that encompassing this all in one network or graph helps to open the space up and break down the silos,” said Pillay. “And the way we ultimately think about that is that people can easily move money between various applications between various geographies and institutions.”

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Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer

South Africa’s API Fintech Stitch Forays Into Nigeria Market.

November 1, 2021

One of South Africa’s leading API fintech startup Stitch has taken its ambitious expansion programme a notch higher with foray into the Nigerian market. This is coming against the backdrop of the extension of its seed round to US$6 million from the US$4 million announced earlier in the year, and at the same time confirmed its expansion into Nigeria. The Stitch API allows developers to connect apps to financial accounts within minutes, allowing their users to share their transaction histories and balances, confirm their identities, and initiate payments.

This tooling allows companies to innovate with new and improved services including personal finance, lending, insurance, payments and wealth management. Stitch also enables fintechs to work with traditional financial institutions in a safer and more compliant way.

The startup announced a US$4 million seed round in February, which has now been extended by US$2 million with participation from investors that include leading global fintech entrepreneurs Tom Blomfield, co-founder of Monzo; Matt Robinson, co-founder of GoCardless; Emilie Choi, president of Coinbase; and Charlie Delingpole, founder of ComplyAdvantage.

This seed extension will enable Stitch to fast-track development, launch their solution and continue to grow the team on the ground in Nigeria, as they prepare to expand further across the continent. Stitch will initially offer a seamless, tokenised pay-by-bank product to help businesses and fintechs in Nigeria improve their user experience, eliminate fraud and reduce fees associated with other payment methods.

“Our goal is to become the go-to partner for any businesses building financial products in Africa. Access to the infrastructure Stitch is building can better enable these businesses to develop increasingly innovative solutions. They can now move money and access critical customer account data, while saving on costs, in hours rather than months,” said Stitch co-founder & chief executive officer (CEO) Kiaan Pillay.

“We’re super excited to be launching in Nigeria today, with support from some of the most incredible fintech founders and operators globally. Nigeria is one of the most active markets on the continent, if not the world, for fintech. The opportunity we see here is endless.”

Blomfield said Stitch was playing a critical role in building the infrastructure that could enable exponential growth for companies looking to scale digital finance solutions in Africa.

“I see a lot of potential in African markets, where the wave of digital finance innovation is really beginning to gain momentum, and the Stitch team is getting in at precisely the right time. The team is one of the best I’ve seen globally, and I’m excited to see them continue to grow in Nigeria and beyond,” he said.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry