Payments infrastructure company Stitch recently acquired In-person payments provider ExiPay, expanding its enterprise payments offering to encompass both online and In-person payments through a single, unified platform.   

Despite the continued growth of e-commerce, in South Africa in 2024, just 6% of retail transactions took place online, projected to reach 10% in 2025. An increasing number of shoppers indicate they would prefer to shop from a brand that has both a physical and an online store. Consumers continue to demand more seamless, personalised and unified experiences no matter where they choose to shop. 

With this expansion, Stitch can support multi-lane retail and omnichannel commerce businesses with a truly unified and reliable platform. 

“We’re excited to bring the ExiPay solution into the Stitch payments suite, enabling enterprise merchants to offer a seamless and reliable payments experience no matter where their customers choose to shop, and manage all their transactions in one place. ExiPay has built a strong solution that, combined with our existing online payments platform, will allow us to serve our clients from a much more holistic perspective, supporting them across every payments touchpoint they have with their customers,” said Stitch Co-founder + President, Junaid Dadan.

The Stitch In-person payments offering will enable enterprise businesses to leverage the industry-leading Stitch payments platform to accept in-person payments via card present, and offer customers the option to pay with alternative online methods at point of sale. Merchants can switch to Stitch In-person payments using their existing fleet of terminals or leverage Stitch to certify new devices, including P2PE certification. The offering supports all major acquiring banks. The integration is easy, and merchants will benefit from the same flexibility, reliability and white glove support enjoyed by Stitch online payments clients. 

At the time of acquisition, ExiPay held existing contracts with several enterprise clients and PSPs operating in South Africa and other African markets, including omnichannel retail brand Bash. With this acquisition, Stitch will serve Bash for both their online and in-person payments needs, and will continue serving other existing ExiPay clients.

“At Bash, we’re committed to providing our customers with seamless and reliable payment experiences, both online and in-store. Partnering with Stitch enhances our ability to deliver on this promise by streamlining operations, improving payment success rates whilst offering our customers more ways to pay wherever they shop. We’re excited about the potential this partnership brings to elevate TFG’s omnichannel strategy,” said Luke Jedeikin, Co-Founder and CEO at Bash. 

Stitch In-person payments will enable card present transactions via the Stitch card solution - the most reliable in the market, thanks to direct integrations with multiple banks and networks, resulting in automated failovers and higher uptime. Merchants that wish to use Stitch for In-person payments will access the same reliability, and can choose to use Stitch to offer multiple online payment methods at POS or via e-commerce.

This solution serves multiple use cases, including:

• Retail merchants operating primarily in-store

• Retail merchants with an online and in-store presence

• Omnichannel merchants looking to unify their offering across channels

• Merchants in the financial services or gaming space that are looking to accept payments or wallet top ups from customers in person as well as online