littlefish, the merchant operating system powering the relationships between Africa’s biggest banks and the merchant class, announced the close of a $9.5 million Series A led by Partech, with participation from TLcom Capital, Flourish Ventures, and Proparco. The round marks a significant milestone in the company’s mission to transform how financial institutions serve small and mid-sized businesses across the continent.
littlefish’s 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. Serving tier 1 financial institutions as clients — including Standard Bank, First National Bank (FNB), and Absa — littlefish enables banks to offer fintech-grade merchant services at scale while preserving ownership of the merchant relationship. The company also holds a key partnership with Visa, which has embedded littlefish’s platform into its small business onboarding strategy. littlefish’s monthly recurring revenue has grown 30× 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. 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.” — Brandon Roberts, Co-Founder & CEO, littlefish
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.
“littlefish has done something rare: it has built indispensable infrastructure and convinced Africa’s most powerful financial institutions to stake their merchant businesses on it. 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.” — Matthieu Marchand, Principal, Partech
“When we backed littlefish at the seed stage, we believed in the team’s vision for what bank-embedded merchant infrastructure could become in South Africa and other emerging markets. Since then, they’ve built deliberately, earned the trust of the largest institutions on the continent, and created a platform that banks need. Participating in this Series A was an easy decision. littlefish’s traction speaks for itself.” — Ameya Upadhyay, General Partner, Flourish Ventures
