Apis Partners reveals $31m South African fintech investment

Apis Growth Fund II, a private equity fund managed by Apis Partners, revealed a proposed investment of €29 million ($31 million) in Peach Payments, a growing digital payment service provider that enables online payments in Africa.

Completion of the investment is subject to the approval of the Competition Commission of South Africa and customary procedural and closing conditions. Peach Payments’ existing investors include UW Ventures, Launch Africa and AG Ventures.

Peach Payments has experienced strong growth in recent years, with revenue increasing more than 650% since 2020, and 80% in 2022 alone. The company intends to use the investment to accelerate its expansion across new African markets, to deepen its product offering, and to reinforce its core merchant value proposition.

“We continue to see significant opportunity in African payments as strong secular trends that are not related to annual business cycles – such as the conversion from cash to digital and in-store to online payments – persist across key markets. We have been impressed by the vision and execution of the management team as Peach Payments capitalises on these trends to bring more end-users into the digital economy, a key part of our drive to democratise access across the continent. We look forward to partnering with Peach Payments to expand its reach into new markets with innovative merchant solutions,” says Matteo Stefanel, co-founder and managing partner, Apis Partners.

“Peach Payments, one of Africa’s most exciting high-growth businesses with a relentless focus on technology and operational leadership, is at the forefront of enabling next-generation payments for merchants across the continent. We are excited to partner with Peach Payments’ fantastic team and look forward to leveraging Apis’ capital, expertise and global network to support new investment in Peach Payments’ infrastructure, products and people to consolidate the company’s recent gains and support the next phase of growth,” says Udayan Goyal, Apis Partners co-founder and managing partner.

Peach Payments was founded by Jain and Andreas Demleitner in 2012 in Cape Town, South Africa, offering a payment gateway to local online merchants. It expanded to Kenya in 2018 and to Mauritius in 2021. Peach Payments’ goal since it was founded has been to be the online payment infrastructure provider that helps businesses scale. In achieving this goal, the business has focused on its merchants’ customers as much as the merchants themselves.

The company provides a toolkit that enables merchants to accept, manage and make payments via mobile and the web. Services offered include online payment acceptance, pay-outs (disbursements), and subscription solutions across a variety of payment types including cards, electronic funds transfer, digital wallets, mobile money, and buy-now pay later options, among others.