(Bloomberg) -- A South African startup that’s building software infrastructure for the continent’s growing fintech sector has raised $21 million in a round led by New York’s Spruce House Partnership.

Other new investors in Cape Town-based Stitch include PayPal Ventures, TrueLayer and Village Global. The company plans to use the cash to expand into new markets and products, co-founder & Chief Executive Officer Kiaan Pillay said in an emailed statement.  

“Our goal is to help fast-growing fintech and embedded finance companies more easily launch increasingly innovative and tailored products,” Pillay said.

The company founded in 2019 builds financial infrastructure that links bank accounts, wallets and other stores of value. Some of its clients include pan-African money-transfer firm Chipper Cash, crypto platform Luno and mobile-payments firm Zapper. 

Startups in Africa raised a record of more than $5 billion last year, the majority of which went to fintech companies. The continent is seen as the ideal market for the burgeoning sector, given a youthful tech-savvy population and a small traditional banking industry.    

“Stitch is building critical infrastructure to enable faster, easier and more secure payments across Africa,” said Ashish Aggarwal, director at PayPal Ventures. “We believe they will play a significant role in contributing to the overall growth of the fintech space in Africa.”

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