Apis Partners Leads €29m (US$31m) Series A Funding For South African Fintech, Peach Payments
Apis Partners Leads €29m (US$31m) Series A Funding For South African Fintech, Peach Payments. Apis Growth Fund II, a private equity fund managed by Apis Partners LLP, a UK-based asset manager, announces its proposed investment of €29M (US$31M) in Baobab Payments GmbH (trading as Peach Payments), a rapidly 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. Apis Partners supports growth stage financial services and financial infrastructure businesses. Peach Payments is the second largest online payment gateway in South Africa, with activities in Kenya and Mauritius, and a staff complement of nearly 150 international professionals.
Peach Payments has experienced exceptional growth in recent years, with revenue increasing more than 650% since 2020 – and 80% in 2022 alone. The company intends to use the investment by the Fund to accelerate its expansion across new African markets, to deepen its product offering, and to reinforce its core merchant value proposition. Peach Payments is known for delivering enterprise-grade products, high end-user conversion, best-in-class risk management, and actionable insights, backed by the best customer support experience on the continent, to its merchants.
Apis Partners will leverage its deep networks and unique experience in scaling leading payment companies to support Peach Payments’s growth and geographic expansion. As an ESGI-native investor, Apis Partners’ sector expertise will help Peach Payments to maximise financial inclusion by enabling more merchants to participate and grow in today’s increasingly digital global economy.
“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, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Apis Partners.
“At Peach Payments, our mission is to enable African businesses and entrepreneurs to develop and succeed in digital commerce. We want to be the infrastructure layer on which they build their business. This was the original vision with which we started and is more relevant today than it has ever been. We’ve witnessed incredible growth in the past three years driven by fundamental forces and shifts in consumer and business adoption of digital commerce. Across market segments – from retail to digital learning, fitness, and even traditional financial services – we’ve onboarded new clients in almost every vertical. We’ve built a very strong team with exceptional operators and I am excited to partner with the team at Apis and take this business to where it deserves to be. The Apis team brings an incredible wealth of experience in fintech across the globe and we look forward to exploring exponential opportunities together with them. ” says Rahul Jain, Founder and CEO, Peach Payments.
