Stitch, a Cape Town-based fintech start-up, has raised US$21-million (R315-million) in a funding round that includes PayPal Ventures.

The round was led by The Spruce House Partnership and includes funding from TrueLayer, Firstminute Capital, The Raba Partnership, CRE Venture Capital, Village Global and Zinal Growth (the investment vehicle of Checkout.com founder Guillaume Pousaz).

Stitch, launched just a year ago, said it will use the money to continue linking bank accounts, wallets and other stores of value, creating what it refers to as “the financial graph”, it said in a statement.

“The funding will be used to significantly expand the team, launch new product offerings and enter new markets across the continent,” it said. The latest round follows a $6-million seed round last year.

Stitch is headquartered in Cape Town but also has a presence in Johannesburg and in Lagos, Nigeria.

The start-up’s payments and data infrastructure “enables players across the fintech ecosystem — which is traditionally fragmented by technical, commercial and political barriers — to transact seamlessly, expand their revenue and growth potential, and significantly reduce conversion time and cost”, it said.

API

“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,” said co-founder and CEO Kiaan Pillay in the statement.

The Stitch application programming interface, or API, allows businesses to access and link their users’ financial accounts to initiate secure bank transfers for one-click pay-ins and payouts; access standardised and categorised transaction history and balance data, for affordability checks and income estimation assessments; and verify account information and ownership, to enable faster and more user-friendly digital onboarding, and to perform fraud checks. – © 2022 NewsCentral Media