“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?”
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.
Stitch Payments processes payments through Stitch Payments (self-operated) and PayOS (self-operated orchestration layer).
The Embedded Finance Index 2026 maps 2 layers in Stitch Payments's stack: Payments / PSP (Stitch Payments (self-operated) and PayOS (self-operated orchestration layer)); Lending (Stitch Buy Now Pay Later (2-6 instalments, merchant settled within 24h)).
Stitch Payments was founded by Kiaan Pillay, Priyen Pillay and Junaid Dadan and is founded in 2019, headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa.
Stitch Payments has raised $46M (South Africa entity, Stitch Money) in total (latest round: Series A extension, 2023).
Get a read on where your own stack stands against Stitch Payments and the rest of its category — what they built versus bought, which providers they use, and where the gaps in your own strategy and competitive set actually are.