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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.
Same company
Stitch Payments was analysed under more than one name on the same domain, so its stack is split across these dossiers. Each was analysed independently and may name providers the others do not.
Stitch1 layer →
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.