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Stitch Payments

“Can a South African payments infrastructure company evolve from open-banking data rails into a full-stack PSP — including card acquiring, in-person payments, and embedded credit — to become the dominant enterprise payments OS for African merchants?”

Founded2019
HQCape Town, South Africa
FoundersKiaan Pillay, Priyen Pillay, Junaid Dadan
Total raised$46M (South Africa entity, Stitch Money)
Latest roundSeries A extension, 2023
IndustryFintech / Cross-border payments
The story

Founded in 2019 as an open-banking data aggregator, Stitch pivoted fully into payments in late 2021 with Pay by Bank and then card and debit order products in 2023, positioning itself as an end-to-end PSP for South African enterprise merchants. The 2025 acquisition of ExiPay added in-person payments and omnichannel capabilities. The 2026 BNPL launch represents Stitch taking on credit risk directly — a significant move from pure infrastructure toward a principal-model embedded finance product. Note: a separate Saudi Arabian entity called 'Stitch' (CEO Mohamed Oueida, founded 2022) appears in some evidence; these are distinct companies and the core subject of this analysis is the South African Stitch Money.

Last 12 months
2025
2026-05
Product timeline
2019
Founded in Cape Town as Stitch Money, initially focused on open banking — enabling businesses to access user financial account data via APIs.· pivot
2021
Emerged from stealth with $4M seed; piloted first payments product (Pay-ins) and launched Pay by Bank.· banking
2022
Raised $21M Series A led by Spruce House Partnership; pivoted fully into payments infrastructure.· pivot
2023
Launched Card payments, Debit Order, and PayOS (payments orchestration and reconciliation system), becoming a full end-to-end PSP; raised $25M Series A extension led by Ribbit Capital.· banking
2025
Acquired in-person payments provider ExiPay, adding card-present transaction capabilities and omnichannel commerce support.· acquisition
2026
Launched Stitch Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), offering 2-6 instalment plans for South African merchants with merchant settlement within 24 hours.· lending
Regulated entities
1
regulatory licence held by Stitch Payments
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
2 layers disclosed in Stitch Payments’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
Stitch Payments (self-operated)PayOS (self-operated orchestration layer)
Lending
in the full report
Accounting gap: significant
1 more provider across 1 layer, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.