African fintech start-up Stitch lands $21m Series A round
South African API fintech firm Stitch has raised $21 million in a Series A round led by The Spruce House Partnership.
Stitch CEO Kiaan Pillay
The round saw participation from PayPal Ventures, TrueLayer, firstminute capital, The Raba Partnership, CRE Venture Capital, Village Global and Checkout.com founder Guillaume Pousaz’s Zinal Growth. The founders of Chipper Cash, Quovo and Unit also contributed.
Stitch says its investors are “working closely with us to enable the boom we’re seeing in financial technology on the continent”.
The fintech plans to use the cash to build the “future of money movement”. The company says its payments and data infrastructure links bank accounts, wallets and other stores of value to allow businesses across the fintech ecosystem — traditionally fragmented by technical, commercial and political barriers — to transact easier, grow faster and significantly reduce conversion time and cost.
Stitch is looking to significantly expand its team, launch new products and enter new markets across the continent.
Stitch co-founder and CEO Kiaan Pillay says: “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.”
The business is involved in the project of cooking oil processing from Groundnuts, Soya beans, Sunflower, Sesame, and other oil content seed. Also, the project is involved in natural juice from pineapple, mango, citrus fruits, and bananas. The project is being worked to promote the business value chain with indigenous farmers, traders, distributors, transporters, business development service providers, extension service providers, suppliers, researchers, information networkers, and financial institutions. The business project supports the growth of farming and encourages indigenous farmers to expand their farming plot land as the business offers them a ready market stimulating their interest and demand to produce more to meet the demand of the processing line of the production products.
The business project is pro-poor in enabling the less privileged population of the undeveloped rural communities to have access to the reliable and long-lasting source of income that facilitates their easy livelihood and live life to the full. The project is here to make poor villages who depend on their livelihood on peasant farming make use of their farming skills to be more beneficial to improve their quality of life and standard of living.
Another advantage of the business project is that the output of the project is food that is required to be consumed every day by nearly two-thirds of the world population. Food is always in high demand because it is the only factor that helps our life to stay longer and happier. No food no life cooking oil makes other prepared foods to be delicious, palatable, and to have the desire to enjoy the mail. Hence the demand for cooking oil is ever in high demand more especially in developing countries like Zambia, Angola, Congo DR, Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, etc in Africa. No one in the countries and others would enjoy a meal without the application of cooking oil unless for medical reasons. Natural juice is a refreshment drink that is ever available in most households and it is the most food that the homeowners rush to use in welcoming their visitors at home. And this drink is naturally nutritious health rich to keep the body healthier and happier. These two projects are conduits of promoting the poverty reduction in the rural areas perse and increasing the food security at households and community levels. The projects will promote the cash inflows and outflows and encourage substantial trading practices even with other projects existing in the trading community and increase the government treasury through tax compliance. The project once supported will contribute heavily to the coronavirus-Covid-19 effect resilient through crop output market offer to the farmers, trade promotion with the downstream market players locally and internationally.