Apis Growth Fund II, a private equity fund managed by Apis Partners, 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.

“At Peach Payments, our mission is 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,”

says Rahul Jain, Co-Founder and CEO, Peach Payments.

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.

Featured image credit: Andreas Demleitner and Rahul Jain, Co-Founder and CEO, Peach Payments