Why We Invested in Littlefish
The merchant ecosystem in emerging markets is undergoing a metamorphosis. Technological innovation and increased competition mean that the “good enough” services offered by financial institutions in the past are no longer good enough. There’s a growing gap in how small- and mid-sized businesses are served. Merchants demand more digital capability faster, while banks are being squeezed on both credit and payment margins. Fintechs aggressively target merchants, but their distribution and sustainability disappoint. The result is a fragmented situation where no player can efficiently deliver the unified, software-driven merchant experience that the market is demanding. In Africa, the merchant acquiring space is entering a software arms race.
Littlefish is leading the vanguard. The Johannesburg-based company’s platform sits at the intersection of banking infrastructure and commerce enablement. The merchant operating system combines the technical depth of payments integrators, the scalability of SaaS platforms, and the usability of modern interfaces. It’s a bank-first, white-label tech stack designed with small business customers in mind. By partnering with South Africa’s biggest banks including Standard Bank, First National Bank (FNB), and Absa, Littlefish gains a deep distribution network and embedded merchant base.
Littlefish aims to inspire better ways of commerce, not simply through technology but by building credibility, trust, and community in the merchant and financial enterprise sectors. The company believes that the best infrastructure startups in emerging markets don’t build for the next five years, they build on the last 15.
We understand this vision. That’s why we invested in Littlefish's 2024 seed round, and we’re proud to join a $9.5M Series A led by Partech with participation from TLcom and Proparco. Littlefish will expand its reach as the team continues to develop its payment infrastructure layer that allows banks, telcos, and other large financial institutions to deliver integrated, digital-first merchant services to everyone. The company is also at the forefront of AI integrations with merchants and is rapidly embedding orchestration, new merchant workflows, and additional services into the cohesive experience.
A Light Bulb at the Bottleshop
Brandon Roberts grew up working in his family’s small businesses, learning how rooted a merchant can be in its community. During his professional career, he worked in technical roles building payment and platform systems companies across Africa. The inspiration for Littlefish struck in 2019. Brandon was assisting his uncle at the family bottleshop where he saw firsthand how modern financial services left small businesses behind. The idea of building to help the little guy led to the launch of Littlefish in 2021.
A working coffee date set up by a friend led Co-Founder and COO Neha Kumar to Littlefish. She and Brandon realized their shared passion for small businesses and communities. From there, Littlefish grew intentionally. Rather than developing individual plug-ins, the company built the entire pipeline. A partnership with Visa that sees Littlefish’s platform embedded into the payment company’s small business onboarding strategy validated this strategy and provided access to merchants.
An early case demonstrated the value of the platform to small businesses. Littlefish launched a pilot with an events merchant across multiple vendor stalls at the T20 cricket tournament. The vendors appreciated the product catalogue, which meant they could seamlessly take cash and card payments, use the barcode scanner, and more. The merchant’s finance team easily ran recon reports at the end of the day. “The smiles, the relief, the exclamation,” Neha remembers. “We knew our platform met a valid need.”
Becoming the Engine Inside Africa’s Largest Financial Institutions
Litttlefish’s commerce layer transforms every acquiring bank into a fintech, and every merchant into a digital business. The company’s software platform consolidates point of sale (POS) apps, back-office CRMs, merchant portals, payments, and APIs into a unified orchestration layer that integrates directly into POS devices and core banking systems.
“We didn’t build an ‘app’ for small business,” Brandon says. “We built the rails for the institutions that serve them, and control their own infrastructure once again. Littlefish transforms ''simple' payment terminals into multi-functional business tools all with one integration.”
Littlefish integrates like an infrastructure vendor, licenses like a SaaS platform, and delivers merchant experiences comparable to the best direct-to-merchant players. In doing so, it occupies a white-space position as the bank-embedded merchant operating system, enabling incumbents to offer fintech-grade services at scale while preserving ownership of the merchant relationship.
Banks and large enterprises get a turnkey solution to engage small business customers, launch new revenue streams, and defend against margin compression and fintech competition. Merchants, meanwhile, don’t see Littlefish, but they experience its presence through simplified onboarding, integrated payments, real-time data insights, and access to ecosystem services. Small businesses transition from juggling fragmented tools to a single platform that grows with them.
A Pan-African Expansion
With the raise, Littlefish is rapidly expanding its team, deepening its product stack, and increasing its go-to-market execution, while remaining focused on enabling and driving growth for its current clients. The company is rolling out across the continent into more than 10 countries including Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia.
Littlefish has one goal in mind: to transform the way financial institutions serve their small business customers. We believe that Littlefish is well positioned to succeed in this endeavor, further enabling the industry’s mission to rapidly formalize Africa’s small business economy. The company is empowering banks to better acquire, manage, and monetize their merchant clients, while providing best-in-class tools to Africa’s small businesses. Littlefish will scale across the extensive merchant bases within its current and future banking partners.
We’re so happy to be in Littlefish’s corner as Brandon, Neha, and the team work towards the goal of helping all the little guys compete.