Sureswipe, a South African payments company has been acquired by a group of investors for an undisclosed amount.
The investors were led by Apis Partners LLP and FinTech investor Crossfin Technology Holdings.
Sureswipe will be consolidated under the newly-formed Crossfin Transactional Services (CTS), along with Innervation Pan African Payments and Emerge Mobile’s iKhokha. However, all three entities will operate separately.
“Although the three strong brands have been consolidated under one entity, they will continue to operate independently within their distinctive markets,” said Sureswipe MD Paul Kent. “We believe each provides a distinctive client solution. By layering a common shared services platform across the three businesses, CTS will provide merchants a ‘one-stop shop’ to help them grow their business.”
CTS now services more than 25,000 active clients, 50,000 active card machines and $5 billion in transaction value, with operations in seven African jurisdictions, providing payment solutions to a variety of local retailers, including micro-merchants, informal traders, larger retailers, and franchises.
“We will continue to invest in complementary businesses to support the team as well as partner with, or invest in, other exciting FinTech companies with products and services that can be distributed across our ‘rails’ and which add value to our customers and their consumers, such as our recent investments in Retail Capital and Nobuntu,” said Anton Gaylard, co-founder and COO at Crossfin.
The London-based private-equity firm is financing the transaction from its Apis Growth Fund I. Last year
Crossfin announced a partnership with Apis to transform the local payments acceptance market and boost financial inclusion to SMMEs, as well as informal merchants in Southern Africa.
Crossfin reported that 46 percent of banked low-income earners in South Africa typically use cash because of limited card acceptance at micro-merchants, especially in rural and peri-urban communities.
Sureswipe is one of South Africa’s first card Payment Service Providers (PSPs) established in 2008 to make card payment acceptance easy and accessible to all independent retailers and service providers. It offers a suite of products that cater for businesses of all sizes providing efficient, affordable and safe payment systems. Over 9000 independent retailers across South Africa are currently using Sureswipe card machines.
