littlefish secures $9.5m Series A led by Partech to scale merchant infrastructure for African banks

littlefish, a merchant operating system connecting Africa’s leading banks with businesses, has secured $9.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Partech, with backing from TLCOM, Flourish Ventures and Proparco. The investment marks a major step in the company’s ambition to reshape how financial institutions support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across Africa.

Operating at the crossroads of banking infrastructure and commerce enablement, littlefish has developed a platform that integrates point-of-sale applications, back-office CRM systems, merchant portals, payments and APIs into a single orchestration layer. This system connects directly with POS devices and core banking platforms, enabling seamless service delivery.

The company already works with tier-one financial institutions, including Standard Bank, First National Bank and Absa, allowing banks to deliver fintech-grade merchant services at scale while retaining control of customer relationships. It has also formed a strategic partnership with Visa, which has incorporated littlefish’s technology into its small business onboarding strategy. Since its seed round, the company reports that monthly recurring revenue has increased 30-fold.

“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.”

The fresh funding will be used to expand the company’s workforce, accelerate product development and strengthen its go-to-market strategy. littlefish also plans to build on its presence in South Africa while expanding into 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,” 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.”