Acquisition unlocks the UEMOA Francophone countries, and later CEMAC for the business
[Cape Town] 3 April 2025 – Digital payments gateway Peach Payments has agreed to acquire West-African payment platform PayDunya. In the process, it enters mainland Francophone Africa for the first time, following its expansion to Eswatini (2024), Mauritius (2021) and Kenya (2018).
Peach Payments is an enterprise-grade payments gateway that enables online payments in Africa for businesses of all sizes.
Dakar-based fintech PayDunya started operations in 2015, after Aziz Yérima realised in 2013 that there were no options to integrate online payment solutions for a women’s community group he was helping to expand online.
Francophone online payments
Yérima worked on a prototype in 2014 and co-founded PayDunya with the aim to build payment infrastructure for Francophone Africa in 2015 with fellow ESMT-Dakar students Youma Fall, Christian Palouki and Honoré Hounwanou (from Senegal, Togo and Côte d’Ivoire respectively).
L to R: Christian Palouki, Youma Fall, and Aziz Yérima
Today PayDunya operates in six West African Francophone countries: Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Mali. It facilitates sending and receiving payments on websites and mobile applications, as well as collection and disbursement of bulk payments. PayDunya processes payments for enterprises like Jeune Afrique, VFS Global, SUNU Assurances, Dubai Port Dakar, Sky Mali, Free business (now Yas) and other fintechs that use PayDunya’s rails.
Led by a proven team of digital entrepreneurs, PayDunya turned €20k of bootstrap financing into a profitable net income company that employs over 40 people, serves more than 4,000 B2B customers, and processes 70,000 transactions per day. With strong unit economics, PayDunya was profitable in its third year and has increased its revenues every year since inception.
Growth opportunities
The West African CFA franc is used by the eight member states of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA): Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo, explains Yérima, who is also the president of SEN FINTECH, the Senegalese fintech association.
“We are thrilled to join forces with Peach Payments, a company that shares our vision of accelerating Africa’s digital transformation through innovative financial solutions,” says Yérima. “This acquisition marks a significant milestone for PayDunya as it enables us to make our expansion dreams to reach and enhance the value we bring to businesses across Francophone and Anglophone Africa come true. Together, we are poised to create a seamless, inclusive, and robust payment ecosystem that empowers African businesses to thrive in the digital economy.
“The UEMOA region and neighbouring Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) region represent a tremendous opportunity for growth, with digital payments adoption increasing rapidly due to rising smartphone penetration and mobile money services. It is early days for e-commerce and digital payments in these markets and by combining our expertise with Peach Payments’ capabilities, we are positioned to drive this growth and enable businesses to realise their full potential in the digital economy,” Yérima adds.
According to Statista, revenue in the West African ecommerce market is projected to reach US$15.33bn, with 47.7m users by 2029. User penetration is expected to hit 12.5% by 2029, and the average revenue per user is expected to be US$330.96.
Pan-African payments
“Aziz, Youma and Christian have built a market-leading business and this acquisition represents an exciting chapter in our journey to build a truly pan-African payment ecosystem. By integrating PayDunya, we are expanding our footprint into the UEMOA and CEMAC regions, unlocking new opportunities for merchants who can now partner with us and access over 450m people across the markets we operate in. Together, we can now offer seamless payment solutions across 12 countries and we will continue to expand this coverage rapidly. This makes the acquisition of PayDunya an obvious step for us, as we expand following our Series A funding round,” says Peach Payments CEO and co-founder Rahul Jain.
Peach Payments CEO and co-founder Rahul Jain
This is the third deal Peach Payments has been involved with since late 2023, when it closed a €29m/US$30m funding round, led by the Apis Growth Fund II. In February 2024 the company acquired technology for in-store payments from Exipay and in June 2024, Peach Payments acquired customer software development firm Operativa to boost its engineering operations.
Jain says, “Peach Payments’ success wasn’t in raising the Series A Funding round. Success is in doing the hard work and expanding the business by putting that money to use. We’ve grown a lot and we are rapidly expanding into more countries.
“Peach Payments’ growth strategy is founded on three pillars: organically growing its existing market share, launching new products and services for merchants and shoppers, and using mergers and acquisitions (M&As) to facilitate growth. The PayDunya acquisition supports our expansion into West Africa, and bolsters what we are doing for cross border and international merchants.”
The deal is expected to be completed within the next few months, pending standard closing conditions and procedures.
/ends
About Aziz Yérima
Passionate about IT, Aziz Yérima holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electronic and Computing science and a Master’s degree in Telecommunication & Multimedia. An expert in electronic payments, mobile money and ICT management, he is co-founder and CEO of PayDunya, a PCI-DSS level 1 certified electronic financial transaction platform that is used to send and receive digital payments from mobile money, bank cards and cash for African and international businesses. In addition to his role at PayDunya, Aziz is the president of the SEN FINTECH, the Senegalese fintech association, which unites stakeholders in West Africa fintech, advocates for their interests and represents them to regulators and other stakeholders in the financial sector. Aziz says, “I have always had the ambition to become an entrepreneur; it is not a question of financial autonomy or freedom, it is just the best way I have found to help my Africa.”
About PayDunya
PayDunya aims to simplify digitalisation of sales, payments and day-to-day operations for African businesses regardless of their size or activity to accelerate Africa’s emergence. For this, we built a single API for businesses to receive (Checkout page) and send payment to Francophone Africa in mobile money wallet, credit cards and money transfer and also bulk payment collection and disbursement solution for interface. We are convinced that digital is a factor of growth and survival for companies whatever their size and field, which is why we are committed to helping them maximise their sales through digitalisation.
About Rahul Jain
Rahul Jain is a co-founder and CEO of Peach Payments, a leading payments platform in South Africa, Kenya and Mauritius. He has worked with leading e-commerce websites and apps across Africa to improve their conversion rates, mitigate risk and optimise customer experience. He has participated in accelerators sponsored by Google and Barclays Africa as well as spoken at numerous events including Youth Pravasi Bhartiya Divas, Africa FinTech Festival, ECOM Africa, and Seamless Africa. Previously, Rahul worked with a strategy consulting firm in Boston, USA, where he advised large retailers and airlines regarding e-commerce, marketing and ancillary revenue streams. Among other qualifications, he holds an MBA from IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain, and participated in an exchange program at Sloan School of Management at MIT in Boston.
About Peach Payments
Peach Payments is a fast-growing African payment solution provider (PSP) that makes online commerce and digital payment acceptance easier and more accessible across Kenya, Mauritius and South Africa. The company works with small and large sellers to provide a complete toolkit to accept, manage and disburse payments through web and mobile. Peach Payments’ merchant partners include your favourite food delivery services, whether you’re ordering in or using a meal kit, travel services that can help you book your next getaway adventure and even your neighbour’s side-hustle e-commerce store. For these partners and their customers, Peach Payments aims to provide delightful experiences that make it as easy as possible to facilitate online payments.
