SA Fintech Stitch Expands Payments Power with Second Major Acquisition

South African payments infrastructure company Stitch  has announced the acquisition of Efficacy Payments , marking its second major strategic buyout following the earlier acquisition of ExiPay. This latest move significantly expands Stitch’s capabilities in the card acquiring space—allowing it to serve merchants both online and in-person as a Designated Clearing System Participant (DCSP).

With Efficacy now part of the Stitch Group, the company is positioned as one of the first fintechs in South Africa to provide direct card clearing services, covering the entire acquiring stack—technical, financial, operational, and compliance—without relying on intermediary acquiring banks or external switches.

The acquisition gives Stitch direct connections to Visa and Mastercard, removing several failure points from card transactions and enabling the company to act as the gateway, switch, and acquirer. This integrated model allows enterprise merchants to benefit from improved transaction conversion rates, faster feature rollouts, real-time reporting, and cost savings across the board.

“By eliminating third-party dependencies and managing the entire card lifecycle internally, we’re able to offer clients a more seamless, efficient and cost-effective solution,” the company said.

Efficacy Payments, founded in 2016 and licensed as a clearing system participant in 2021, was South Africa’s second fintech to receive such designation. Its integration into Stitch strengthens the group’s market position and underlines its ambition to provide an end-to-end payments infrastructure purpose-built for the modern African enterprise.