Peach Payments, a South African digital payments firm has acquired customer software development firm Operativa and will integrate the entire Operativa team into Peach Payments, with Operativa co-founders Dayne Olivier and Ben Janecke taking on Principal Engineer positions.
The acquisition comes after Peach Payments latest close of $30 millionled by the Apis Growth Fund II. The terms of the deal were not disclosed but the full acquisition is expected to be completed by August.
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. 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.”
Operativa works with clients in the financial services, information security, e-commerce and cloud hosting industries. 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.
“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.
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.
Bringing Operativa’s specialised skills and developers in-house allows Peach Payments to deliver on its growth strategy more quickly and efficiently, says Jain.
“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.