South African fintech startup littlefish, a merchant operating system powering the relationships between Africa’s biggest banks and the merchant class, has closed a US$9.5 million Series A round of funding as it works to transform how financial institutions serve small and mid-sized businesses across the continent.
Co-founded in 2021 by Brandon Roberts and Miod Davith Kahwa, the Johannesburg-based littlefish is a merchant operating system that transforms acquiring banks into fintechs and small businesses into digital enterprises. By integrating directly into POS devices and core banking systems, littlefish enables Africa’s largest financial institutions to deliver unified, digital-first merchant services at scale.
The platform sits at the intersection of banking infrastructure and commerce enablement. Its commerce layer consolidates point-of-sale applications, back-office CRMs, merchant portals, payments, and APIs into a unified orchestration layer that integrates directly into POS devices and core banking systems.
The US$9.5 million Series A round was led by Partech, with participation from TLcom Capital, Flourish Ventures, and Proparco. TLcom and Flourish also took part in littlefish’s last investment round in 2024.
With the new capital, littlefish is significantly growing its team, accelerating product development, and scaling its go-to-market operations. The company will deepen its relationships with existing South African banking clients and merchants while expanding its footprint to more than 10 additional African markets, including Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia.
The startup is already serving tier 1 financial institutions as clients, including Standard Bank, First National Bank (FNB), and Absa. It also has a key partnership with Visa, which has embedded littlefish’s platform into the card payment institution’s small business onboarding strategy. Littlefish’s monthly recurring revenue has grown 30x since its seed round.
“This raise is a validation of our belief that the best way to serve Africa’s small businesses is to work with the institutions they already trust, not around them,” said Roberts. “We’ve proven the model in South Africa, and this capital gives us the runway to deepen those relationships and bring what we’ve built to millions more merchants across the continent. The little guys deserve world-class financial infrastructure, too, and we’re building it.”
Matthieu Marchand, principal at Partech, said littlefish had done something rare.
“It has built indispensable infrastructure and convinced Africa’s most powerful financial institutions to stake their merchant businesses on it,” he said. “With the deep trust littlefish has already established in South Africa and a clear path to expansion across more than 10 markets, we believe the company is positioned to become the defining merchant infrastructure layer for the continent. We’re proud to lead this round and support the team as they scale.”
