Rahul Jain, CEO and co-founder of Peach Payments.

Peach Payments, a South African fintech, has acquired customer software development firm Operativa as a going concern.

The acquisition is Peach Payments' first since it closed a €29 million/$30 million investment round headed by the Apis Growth Fund II last year.

Apis Partners supports growth-stage financial services and financial infrastructure businesses.

Peach Payments is South Africa's second largest online payment gateway, with operations in Kenya and Mauritius.

At the time, the firm stated that it wanted to use the Fund's investment to accelerate its expansion into new African markets, broaden its product offering, and strengthen its core merchant value proposition.

The fintech announced today that the whole Operativa team will be merged into Peach Payments, with co-founders Dayne Olivier and Ben Janecke taking on principal engineer responsibilities.

In a statement, Peach says Olivier and Janecke have worked with Peach Payments since 2022, building and maintaining a number of the company’s payments systems and solutions.

“The pair and their team have been instrumental in building the technical architecture that has paved the way for Peach Payments’ rapid expansion, including integrating additional payment methods such as Apple Pay, and onboarding new merchants and banking partners,” says the company.

According to Rahul Jain, CEO and co-founder of Peach Payments, Operativa has been a "trusted partner since the very beginning of our relationship", so the opportunity to "acquire the business was not only a strategic business decision, but felt like a natural next step.”

Operativa has serviced clients in the financial services, information security, e-commerce and cloud hosting industries. Following the acquisition, it is handing over operations for its other clients to ensure business continuity, says Peach.

“We have always really enjoyed working with Peach Payments. We believe that the business has what it takes to become the undisputed payments leader in Africa. We see this acquisition as a call up to the winning team,” Olivier says.

Janecke says the decision to sell the business had been influenced by a number of factors, including their relationship with Peach Payments and its plans for the future, as well as market conditions.

“We were able to build something really special with Operativa. We made significant strides working with Peach Payments as our partner, and we are confident that as an integrated business, we’ll be able to achieve even more,” Janecke adds.

Jain says bringing Operativa’s specialised skills and developers in-house allows Peach Payments to deliver on its growth strategy more quickly and efficiently.

“The additional capital raised from the Apis Growth Fund II is allowing us to execute faster as we build new products and expand across Africa. Operativa has the people, skills, and intricate knowledge that comes from having worked with us on developing our systems, allowing us to hit the ground running together on some really exciting new projects,” says Jain.

The full acquisition is expected to be completed by August.