By Shruti Menon Seeboo
When the 6th India-Africa Entrepreneurship & Investment Summit convenes in Cape Town from 13 to 15 July, the conversation around digital commerce and financial infrastructure will find a sharp, experienced voice in Sandeep Chagger, Managing Director for Africa at Peach Payments. A seasoned professional with extensive experience in operational leadership and digital banking, Chagger brings to the role a background that spans transaction banking, digital innovation, and strategic business development. Prior to Peach Payments, he spearheaded digital transformation initiatives within the banking sector at AfrAsia Bank as Digital and Transaction Banking Head and Projects and Digital Innovations Head. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Rajasthan, a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst designation, and has completed the Oxford Fintech Programme at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. At Peach Payments — founded in Cape Town in 2012 and today one of Africa’s leading payments gateways — he oversees operations across nine countries, driving a platform that processes billions of transactions annually and serves merchants ranging from large domestic institutions to global businesses using Mauritius as a regional billing and treasury hub.
Building a fintech business across Africa, Chagger is clear, requires more than a strong product. “Africa is not one payment market — it is many,” he says. “Every country has its own regulatory environment, banking infrastructure, payment methods and consumer behaviours.” Peach Payments’ growth strategy has been anchored on three pillars: growth in existing markets, launching new products and services, and expansion into new African markets through organic growth or selective acquisitions. “Success comes from understanding those local complexities and solving them through technology, strong local partnerships and teams on the ground with deep market expertise,” he says. “That combination enables us to build scalable infrastructure while delivering solutions that feel local in every market we serve.”
Mauritius has emerged as a particularly significant node in that strategy. “Between 2024 and 2025, our transaction volumes in Mauritius grew by more than 300 percent, driven by merchants investing in digital commerce and seeking scalable online payment solutions,” Chagger says. Today, Peach Payments serves more than 150 companies in Mauritius, spanning large domestic institutions, SMEs, and Global Business Companies that use the island as their regional or global billing and treasury hub. “Mauritius serves as an important commercial and bilingual operational hub that supports our expansion across Africa,” he says, “while our growing presence across the continent enables us to offer merchants a unified, scalable payments platform as they expand into African markets.”
The acquisition of PayDunya, which took Peach Payments into Francophone West Africa for the first time, reinforced a lesson Chagger considers central to the company’s approach. “Every market is different,” he says. “South Africa and Mauritius are card-heavy, while in Kenya the MPESA mobile money solution is most popular. The rest of the African market also tends more towards mobile money.” The acquisition now means Peach Payments can enable businesses to accept payments from 15 countries in Africa through a single API. “The payments field is very fragmented in Africa, and that is what we are solving for,” he says. “There is no one-size-fits-all approach — success comes from combining a unified technology platform with deep local integrations and partnerships.”
On the opportunity for payments interoperability between India and Africa, Chagger sees a compelling and growing case. “The focus should be on making cross-border payments as seamless as domestic payments,” he says, pointing to trade, investment, tourism, and the Indian diaspora across Africa as forces deepening economic ties between the two regions. “The middle class of India — roughly 300 million people — are potential tourists to the African continent,” he notes. He also highlights the significance of the UPI integration between Mauritius and India as an early signal of what is possible. “Mauritius and India partnered to launch UPI in Mauritius and we expect it will continue to grow as bilateral payment channels between African countries and India expand,” he says. “The reality is a work in motion.”
On the broader shift from cash to digital, Chagger points to a transformation that is already well underway. “Africa has leapfrogged from cash to mobile money,” he says. “More than 70 percent of global mobile money payments happen in Africa.” At Peach Payments, the role is to simplify that complexity for merchants — integrating with mobile money operators, card schemes, bank transfer networks and instant payment systems through a single integration. “When payments become faster, more affordable and widely accepted, they don’t just support trade — they help unlock new trade, tourism and investment opportunities between India and Africa,” he says. To sustain that momentum, he argues, collaboration between regulators, banks, payment networks, and fintechs will be essential to ensure innovation is matched with interoperability, trust, and strong consumer protection.
