South African Fintech Startups to Watch in 2025: Cutting-Edge Payment Solutions for SMEs and Beyond

In Brief

• Fintech solutions in South Africa are driving inclusion with affordable payment systems, blockchain integration, and stablecoin adoption.

• Startups like Tata-iMali, TurnStay, Sticitt, and UsPlus are solving sector-specific problems—from informal trade to travel, education, and SME financing.

• The rise of localized, low-cost platforms is reducing fees, boosting efficiency, and opening access to underserved communities and industries.

In Africa’s fintech space, South Africa continues to dominate with its pro-regulatory framework supporting a thriving DeFi community, with the main focus of overhauling growth. Eight out of nine unicorn startups within the nation are fintech companies. South Africa plays a vital role, accounting for nearly 40% of the continent’s total fintech earnings.

Affordable payment systems are the go-to option for most SMEs and individuals, catering to their transversing borders, offering lower transaction costs and bypassing traditional hurdles from bank transfers. Over the years, fintech solutions have developed, integrating blockchain payment solutions, accommodating digital assets like stablecoins and offering easier conversion rates.

Empowering Informal Trade: Low-Cost Access for Merchants

Unlike international regions, in Africa, our informal economy is the major user of fintech solutions. This is no different for South Africa, as spaza shops, street vendors and micro-businesses forgo the cumbersome structures of traditional banking and card systems. Reason: it’s either too expensive, requires a tedious and complex registration process or has limited reach.

These factors echo throughout South Africa, giving rise to payment solutions specifically tailored to offer broader financial services to the local vendor. This was a major game changer with dominating payment systems cutting up to 10% of total transaction fees; some South African fintech startups go as little as 1%.

CHECK OUT: Visa Funds Africa Through Fintech Accelerator Program 2025

Big names like TymeBank, Paymenow, Omniscient, Stitch, and Yoco tapped into this lucrative market, garnering global attention. However, an interesting shift brewed a peculiar subset focused on helping communities overshadowed by startups chasing billion-dollar valuations rather than utility. Given South Africa’s steady rise in accepting and accommodating digital assets, these startups focused more on expanding access to markets like schools, travel, informal merchants, and small businesses across South Africa.

Tata-iMali

Stablecoins account for 43% of Africa’s total crypto revenue. Its superiority over CBDCs, stability over cryptocurrency, and extended reach tugged the hearts of many.

Enter Tata-iMali. Founded in 2023 by Gregory Andrews and Donel Chihoma, offers accessible blockchain payment solutions to South Africa’s informal economy. Their core selling point is a low-cost blockchain wallet for merchants combined with a simplified point-of-sale system. The platform is an alumnus of the Lisk Incubation program, an initiative focused on supporting African blockchain projects. This greatly boosted its credibility, access and reach throughout Africa, offering low transaction fees for street vendors, spaza shops and SMEs.

The organizations also leverage ZARP, a Rank-backed stablecoin. These digital assets contribute to its instant payment settlement within the Lisk Blockchain. So far, the platform has over 34+ active business users processing over R84,000 in transactions, earning R25,000 despite still being a fledgling startup.

Their impact hasn’t gon unnoticed with the firms securing almost $200,000(R3.61 million) in funding by July 2025. This figure represents contributions from the Lisk incubation programs and a $150,000 angel investment from Stefan Thomas, former CTO at Ripple.

TurnStay: Unlocking Global Revenue for African Travel

TurnStay, founded in 2021 by Alon Stern (ex-Slide Financial) and James Hedley (ex-Quicket), targets a specific niche in Africa’s travel and hospitality sector. Tourism is among South Africa’s main highlights; however, high fees, currency conversion losses, failed transactions, and reliance on expensive global booking platforms eat significantly into revenue.

The platform prides itself on tackling this issue through its payment solutions, allowing African hotels, guesthouses and tour operators to accept payments easily from international customers. With a bold claim of reducing up to 70% of international payment expenses, it encourages more direct bookings, freeing many businesses from hefty commission fees.

Demonstrating string traction, TurnStay has processed over $ 2.7 million(R50 million) in transactions. Their success speaks volumes with First Circle Capital alongside TLCom Capital, Enza Capital, Incisive Ventures, CVVC, and Equitable Ventures investing $2 million(R34 million) in the seed round.

Sticitt: Modernizing Financial Management for Schools and Organizations

Digital assets have found their way into schools, with Sticitt offering affordable fintech solutions within schools. Their systems provide a user-friendly system enabling parents, learners, or members to pay for fees, uniforms, events, and more online or via card. Their main focus is on providing a comprehensive cashless payment and financial literacy platform.

Aside from offering integrated payment solutions, it also provides institutions with backend tools that improve cash flow visibility and enhance accountability.

Sticitt is currently live in 841 schools servicing over 75,700 users, facilitating transactions exceeding a whopping $340 million (R 6.3 billion). Dennis Wevell, Mitch Dart, and Theo Kitshoff continue to aim for new heights, securing an undisclosed Series A funding led by Knife Capital.

UsPlus Fueling SME Growth with Instant Working Capital

Unpaid invoices are often a nightmare for businesses relying on every income to circulate it within their operation. Hence, waiting 30,60 or even 90 days for invoices to be paid cripples operations. UsPlus counters this conundrum by via invoice discounting(factoring) and purchase order finance.

This generally involves buying a business’s unpaid invoices or approved purchase orders at a discount. In return, the SME receives the majority of the cash owed immediately, rather than waiting for the customer’s payment term to expire. This provides instant working capital to cover payroll, suppliers, inventory, or seize new opportunities without taking on traditional, often inaccessible, bank debt.

This is a practical solution with UsPlus advancing over $130 million to more than 700 businesses, directly supporting thousands of jobs. This led Verdant Capital Hybrid Fund to invest $2 million in UsPlus to expand their affordable payment systems throughout South Africa.