South African API fintech startup Stitch has raised a US$21 million Series A funding round to expand its team, launch new product offerings, and enter new markets across the continent.
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 of last year, and extended it to US$6 million in October, when it also expanded to Nigeria. It has now quickly moved on to Series A, securing US$21 million in a round led by The Spruce House Partnership, with participation from PayPal Ventures, TrueLayer, firstminute capital, The Raba Partnership, CRE Venture Capital, Village Global, Zinal Growth, and others, including founders of Chipper Cash, Quovo and Unit.
The funding will be used to significantly expand the Stitch team, launch new product offerings, and enter new markets across the continent.
“We are incredibly fortunate to be supported by some of the best investors, founders and builders in the fintech space globally,” said Stitch co-founder and CEO Kiaan Pillay.
“They are working closely with us to enable the boom we’re seeing in financial technology on the continent. Across the hundreds of customers we work with, big and small, we’re witnessing a record pace of development of new financial products. Our goal is to help fast-growing fintech and embedded finance companies more easily launch increasingly innovative and tailored products, expand into new markets and optimise their solutions – so they can grow even faster.”
Ben Stein, co-founder of The Spruce House Partnership, said he was excited to be a part of Stitch’s future.
“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,” he said.
Ashish Aggarwal, director at PayPal Ventures, said Stitch was building critical infrastructure to enable faster, easier and more secure payments across Africa.
“We believe they will play a significant role in contributing to the overall growth of the fintech space in Africa – and are excited to be investing at this important moment in their journey,” he said.
