Apis Growth Fund II, a private equity fund managed by Apis Partners LLP, a UK-based asset manager, announced its proposed investment of €29 million (R568.3 million) in Baobab Payments GmbH (trading as Peach Payments), a rapidly growing digital payment service provider that enables online payments in Africa on Tuesday.
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.
Matteo Stefanel, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Apis Partners, said they continued to see significant opportunity in African payments as strong secular trends that were 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,” Stefanel said.
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 said it 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.
Udayan Goyal, Apis Partners Co-Founder and Managing Partner, said Peach Payments, one of Africa’s most exciting high-growth businesses with a relentless focus on technology and operational leadership, was 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,” Goyal said.
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 would leverage its deep networks and unique experience in scaling leading payment companies to support Peach Payments’ growth and geographic expansion.
As an ESGI-native investor, Apis Partners’ sector expertise said it would help Peach Payments to maximise financial inclusion by enabling more merchants to participate and grow in today’s increasingly digital global economy.
Rahul Jain, Co-Founder and CEO of Peach Payments, said at Peach Payments, their mission was to enable African businesses and entrepreneurs to succeed in digital commerce. “We want to be the infrastructure layer they build their business on. This was our original vision when we started and is more relevant today than ever,” Jain said.
“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.”
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.
According to revenue information provider, which covers key performance indicators for more than 30 000 online stores and marketplaces called ecommerceDB, South Africa is the 42nd largest market for e-Commerce, with a predicted revenue of $7,217.8 million by this year, placing it ahead of Romania.
Revenue was expected to show a compound annual growth rate (CAGR 2023-2027) of 12.5%, resulting in a projected market volume of $11,577.2 million by 2027. With an expected increase of 17.9% this year, the South African e-Commerce market contributed to the worldwide growth rate of 17.0% this year. Like in South Africa, global e-Commerce sales were expected to increase over the next years.
Five markets were considered by ecommerceDB within the South African e-Commerce market. Electronics and Media is the largest market and accounts for 24.8% of the South African e-Commerce revenue. It is followed by Food and Personal Care with 23.0%, Toys, Hobby & DIY with 18.5%, Furniture and Appliances with 18.0%, and Fashion with the remaining 15.8%.
BUSINESS REPORT