littlefish Raises $9.5M Series A Round Led by Partech to Power Merchant Infrastructure for Banks Across Africa

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — littlefish, the merchant operating system powering the relationships between Africa's biggest banks and the merchant class, today announced the close of a $9.5 million Series A round led by Partech, with participation from TLCOM, 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 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 Brandon Roberts, Co-Founder and CEO of littlefish. “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.”

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. 

An investment fully aligned with Proparco’s strategy

Through this transaction, Proparco is pursuing its goal of strengthening the range of financial services available to African SMEs by supporting both technological innovation and local financial institutions.

“littlefish perfectly illustrates the key role that B2B fintechs can play in helping African banks improve financial inclusion for SMEs. By facilitating the digitization of payment and management services, this solution helps strengthen the relationship between banks and SMEs. As such, it truly aligns with Proparco’s DNA,” said Fabrice Perez, Head of the Financial Institutions and Innovation Division at Proparco.
 

“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,” said Matthieu Marchand, Principal at Partech. “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.”

“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,” said Ameya Upadhyay, General Partner at Flourish Ventures. “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 round was an easy decision. littlefish’s traction speaks for itself, and we’re excited to see what comes next.”
 

This investment is made under the EU-backed Choose Africa VC program with support from the European Union and the European Fund for Sustainable Development Plus (EFSD+). By improving access to finance for early-stage companies, the program fosters entrepreneurship, innovation and job creation in Africa, contributing to the EU’s Global Gateway strategy and the Team Europe Initiative IYBA.