Baobab Payments GmbH, trading as Peach Payments, has concluded a €29M / US$30M funding round. The round, announced in April, was led by Apis Growth Fund II (the “Fund”), a private equity fund managed by Apis Partners LLP (“Apis Partners”), a UK-based asset manager.
Peach Payments is an enterprise-grade digital payment service provider that enables online payments in Africa for businesses of all sizes. In April 2023, Apis Partners announced the Fund’s intention to invest in Peach Payments as part of a funding round consisting of a mix of primary and secondary investments.
Says Rahul Jain, CEO and co-founder of Peach Payments, “This funding has been raised to accelerate growth and will be used to build out new products and expand into new countries in Africa. We also intend to double down on the markets in which we already have a presence – South Africa, Kenya, Mauritius – to grow market share, expand our headcount and launch new products. All these actions have the core focus of serving our merchants and helping them to scale their businesses.”
Businesses that use Peach Payments in one country don’t need to find a new payment partner when they expand to a new African country – they can just grow into the new geography, Jain explains. The payment platform hopes to expand this functionality across the continent’s 54 countries, some with as many as 12 payment methods, including credit cards, debit cards, instant EFTs, multiple buy-now-pay-later options and electronic vouchers.
“For businesses targeting consumers across Africa, this fragmentation in payment methods and stores of value makes it incredibly complicated to accept payments in their digital channel,” Jain explains. “Peach Payments already abstracts that complexity for merchants in the countries where we are operational. We want to expand this to more African countries, and are evaluating a number at this time.”
