Open finance continues to be a significant theme in the world of fintech as businesses tap APIs to access customers’ financial accounts and provide a gamut of integrated and embedded financial services. In the latest development, Stitch one of the prominent players building and operating these APIs in Africa. This news follows the $4 million Stitch raised out of stealth in February 2021, a prequel to the $2 million extension round it secured four months ago, bringing its seed round to $6 million. In total, Stitch has raised $27 million to date. The South African API fintech enables businesses to build, optimize, and scale financial products. Per a statement released by the company, it plans to create a “financial graph” ecosystem across Africa with the new funding. The company describes the financial graph as an infrastructure for financial building blocks that allow businesses to write code once, launch in multiple markets and scale faster based on interoperability across regions, providers, banks, and other types of financial accounts.
Stitch views this graph in three stages. The first is what it launched from stealth: the pure infrastructural play of connecting financial and bank accounts with an API. The second seeks to acquire merchants and businesses to build use cases and applications on top of that infrastructure. And the last is getting end consumers to link their accounts via these businesses. Stitch’s provides solutions for e-commerce companies, marketplaces & platforms, and its leading clientele, fintechs. As with other years, African fintechs outperformed other startups in raising venture capital, particularly in a record-breaking 2021 where they raised 50-60% of total VC funding per reports. Their importance can’t be overstated and infrastructural players such Stitch, Mono, Okra, Plaid and OnePipe —all who raised money within the past year, some in seed and others, Series A — are pivotal to that collective growth of driving financial inclusion and ease of payments across the continent.