Stitch Launches BNPL Checkout for South African Merchants

In Short

Stitch has launched a buy now pay later option for South African merchants. The feature supports online and in-store instalment payments and pays merchants out within 24 hours.

What Happened

Stitch, a South Africa-based payments infrastructure company, has entered the local BNPL market with a merchant-first product.

BNPL, short for buy now pay later, lets a shopper split a purchase into smaller payments over time, instead of paying the full amount upfront. Stitch said customers can choose a repayment schedule and split purchases into two to six instalments at checkout.

For merchants, Stitch is pitching speed and certainty. The company said it will settle the full purchase amount, minus fees, within 24 hours, even though the customer pays over time.

That approach removes a common BNPL problem for retailers, which is waiting on repayment and managing the risk of missed instalments. Stitch is also embedding BNPL directly into its existing payment rails, so merchants can offer instalments across the same online checkout and physical point of sale flows they already use.

Stitch said enterprise merchants can customise how the BNPL option appears on their storefronts. It can also be shown only for specific product categories, based on a merchant’s preference.

Company president and co-founder Junaid Dadan said Stitch is already seeing higher approval and facility rates than other market players. Approval rate is how often customers get accepted for the instalment plan, and facility rate is how often credit is actually extended.

Why It Matters

South Africa’s BNPL market is forecast to grow 22.2% a year and reach $1.17 billion in 2026, based on third-party market research cited by the company. As more shoppers look for flexible payments, merchants will care about two things, conversion at checkout and fast settlement.

If Stitch can deliver reliable payouts and simple integration, BNPL could become another standard payment method on South African storefronts, not just a separate credit product.