South Africa’s payments infrastructure company Stitch has launched WigWag, a new brand designed to serve SMEs and individual business owners with easy, no code payment solutions.
Powered by the Stitch API, WigWag aims to help small and growing businesses to accept local and international card payments in minutes, without the need for a website or developer resources. They simply need to send a unique payment link to customers in any chat or email.
According to Danielle Laity, WigWag Product Manager at Stitch, “At Stitch, we realise payments aren’t one-size-fits-all. Small businesses require access to simple, out-of-the-box tools that can make it easier and faster to collect payments. We created WigWag specifically with these small business clients in mind. Now anyone can have access to reliable payments, powered by the Stitch API, and offer their customers a truly seamless experience.”
Virtually any individual or business that would like to accept digital payments can use WigWag to register and verify their business in minutes via the WigWag website, then generate a link for your customer with the amount and when you want it to expire then send the link to the customer via any social media chat, WhatsApp, SMS or email. That’s it! The customer can make a fast, easy card payment just by clicking the link and you can see which payments are still pending and reconcile all transactions through the same dashboard.
The social commerce industry presents a strong opportunity in South Africa. The sector is expected to grow by 63.7% on an annual basis to US $1363.9 million in 2023 – and is further expected to record a CAGR of 38.4% during 2022-2028.
Today, informal enterprises constitute 28.8% of South African businesses. In 2019, over 51% of those informal enterprises indicated they had encountered strong interest from customers in making payments with card, and this has continued to grow.f
Founded by Kiaan Pillay, Natalie Cuthbert, and Priyen Pillay to provide full API access to financial accounts across Africa, starting with South Africa. Stitch allows developers to connect apps to financial accounts using its API. Users can share their transaction history and balances, confirm their identities, and make payments using this feature.
“I’m loving [WigWag]! It’s so easy to check my Instagram sales in one place. When I do a drop and create links, there’s my whole postal list right there. No admin,” said Tamsyn Postma, Owner, Dear Prudence Vintage.
To sign up for WigWag, interested businesses can create an account via the website. As part of launch promotions, the first 300 businesses that sign up for WigWag can send a payment link to the WIgWag team and will receive R100.
Stitch announced the launch of Card payments as it expanded into an end-to-end payments service provider in March this year. As the core Stitch API is designed to serve enterprise businesses with complex payments needs, WigWag was designed specifically to enable easy payments for SMEs while leveraging the Stitch card rails.
Stitch emerged from stealth in February 2021 and expanded into Nigeria in October 2021. The firm raised $21 million in Series A funding in February 2022. Backers include PayPal Ventures, TrueLayer, firstminute capital, The Raba Partnership, CRE Venture Capital, Village Global, Zinal Growth (the investment vehicle of Checkout.com founder Guillaume Pousaz) and angels including founders and early builders from Chipper Cash, Monzo, Venmo, GoCardless, Plaid, Unit and more.
The firm earlier raised $4 million in a seed round from an impressive global investor lineup to prepare for its pan-African expansion. Later the firm secured an additional US$6 million in its seed round for its expansion into Nigeria.
Stitch also partnered with ImaliPay to launch in South Africa, and to help them get more money into the hands of the significant gig worker population in this market. ImaliPay launched in South Africa with a number of vendor partners, initially focused on buy-now-pay-later services, with savings to follow. Gig workers can use ImaliPay to purchase petrol, smartphones, airtime, and other tools through a WhatsApp chatbot. They’ll be given vouchers to utilize at partner vendors to purchase the tools they need.
ImaliPay has powered over 400,000 litres of petrol and enabled over 30 million rides on ride-sharing platforms in Kenya and Nigeria since its launch in 2020. They’ve also made it possible for gig workers to save money and get affordable insurance.