NjiaPay, a South African startup aiming to simplify Africa’s complex payments ecosystem, has hired Mike McLaren, a key executive from rival fintech Stitch, as its new Chief Operating Officer.

The move signals an aggressive push by the fledgling company, which raised a $1.3m pre-seed round in January, to capture a slice of the continent’s notoriously fragmented digital payments market.

McLaren most recently served as General Counsel at Stitch, one of South Africa’s prominent payment service providers (PSPs). There, he was instrumental in scaling the company’s legal and regulatory functions and played a key role in securing its $55m Series B funding round — a figure that dwarfs NjiaPay’s current backing but highlights the calibre of experience the startup has attracted.

His appointment comes as NjiaPay looks to expand its footprint beyond its initial base in South Africa, targeting a growing roster of online businesses in hospitality, e-commerce, and telecommunications.

“Bringing Mike on board is a major milestone for NjiaPay,” said Jonatan Allback, CEO and co-founder. “His experience at Stitch, combined with his business, legal and operational acumen, will be invaluable as we scale NjiaPay’s platform and enter new markets.”

Tackling Fragmentation

For businesses operating across Africa, the payments landscape is a significant operational hurdle. A patchwork of mobile money operators, card schemes, and bank transfer systems forces many companies to integrate with multiple PSPs, creating a web of complexity.

NjiaPay, whose name means “route” in Swahili, is not another PSP. Instead, it offers a Payment Management Platform (PMP) — a layer of technology that sits on top of existing providers. With a single API, it allows businesses to aggregate, orchestrate, and route transactions through various payment gateways and methods.

“I’ve seen the payments landscape in Africa evolve rapidly, and what excites me about NjiaPay is the opportunity to tackle the fragmentation and inefficiencies from an entirely new angle,” McLaren said in a statement. “NjiaPay’s platform gives businesses real control over their payments, something that’s been missing in the market.”

The platform’s features, like intelligent routing to reduce failed transactions when a PSP is offline and a unified checkout experience, are designed to increase revenue and cut operational costs — tools previously accessible only to the continent’s largest enterprises.

Forged from Experience

NjiaPay’s strategy is born from firsthand frustration. The company is a spin-off from Talk360, an international calling app with a significant African user base. Its co-founders include Dean Hiine, Hans Osnabrugge, Roderick Simons, and Jonatan Allback. Allback, NjiaPay’s CEO, and co-founder Roderick Simons (CPO/CTO) built the platform internally to manage Talk360’s own payment challenges.

“We understand the pain points of dealing with six different payment service providers across Africa, the challenges of maintaining all those integrations… and reconciling data from six different settlement reports,” Allback told Launch Base Africa earlier this year. “This direct experience is a key reason why we built NjiaPay.”

Allback brings 15 years of payments experience to the venture, including nearly a decade at Dutch fintech giant Adyen, which he joined as an early employee in 2012 and saw through its hyper-growth phase.

A Niche in the Mid-Market

The startup’s $1.3m pre-seed round, which closed in January, was led by Cape Town-based VC HAVAÍC, with participation from Renew Capital and several angel investors. The capital is being deployed to expand its product and forge new partnerships.

While the African fintech scene is crowded, Allback argues that NjiaPay has a distinct advantage by targeting mid-market companies.

“Some mid-market companies, with monthly transaction volumes ranging from half a million to one million rand ($27,000 — $54,000), may still need to integrate with two to three different PSPs,” he said, citing needs for performance or broader payment method coverage. He also noted that many local PSPs cannot process US dollars, forcing businesses onto expensive alternatives like PayPal, which can charge fees approaching 10%.

This focus distinguishes NjiaPay from other payment orchestration players in the region. Competitors like MoneyHash are concentrated on North Africa and the Middle East, while others like Moment (a joint venture between Rapyd and MultiChoice) and DLocal are largely geared towards enterprise-level clients.

“From our perspective, with our focus on mid-market clients, we currently lack direct competitors in some of the markets where we operate,” Allback asserted.

With a new high-profile COO, fresh capital, and a clear strategic focus, NjiaPay is betting that it can become the indispensable “route” for businesses navigating the continent’s digital economy.