Peach Payments buys software firm Operativa

Peach Payments is putting a more than R500m cash pile to use, signing a deal to acquire Cape Town software development firm Operativa. 

On Monday, the digital payments company said it had acquired Operativa, a customer software development firm, as a going concern. This marks the first acquisition by Peach since closing a $30m (R547.87m) funding round, led by the Apis Growth Fund II, last year.

The transaction will see the full Operativa team integrated into Peach, with co-founders Dayne Olivier and Ben Janecke taking on principal engineer positions at the payments business.

Peach, the second-largest online payment gateway in SA, was founded by Rahul Jain and Andreas Demleitner in 2012 in Cape Town. It expanded to Kenya in 2018 and Mauritius in 2021.

The payments start-up, which has about 150 staff, enables small and large merchants to accept, manage and make e-commerce and digital payments via mobile devices and the web. Services include online payment acceptance, payouts (disbursements), and subscription through various payment types such as cards, electronic funds transfers, digital wallets, mobile money, and buy now, pay later options.

“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,” said Peach CEO Jain.

Olivier and Janecke have worked with Peach since 2022, building and maintaining a number of the company’s payment systems and solutions.

Peach said the pair and their team “have been instrumental in building the technical architecture” that has paved the way for its “rapid expansion”, including integrating payment methods such as Apple Pay, and onboarding new merchants and banking partners.

Operativa has serviced clients in the financial services, information security, e-commerce and cloud hosting industries. After the acquisition, it is handing over operations for its other clients to ensure business continuity.

“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,” Jain said.

The acquisition is expected to be completed by August.

gavazam@businesslive.co.za