Stitch, the payments solution behind South Africa's largest businesses, today officially announced the launch of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) as a checkout payment option for both its enterprise clients and for Express, including its e-commerce plug-in for merchants on platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce, as well as its self-serve API.
Already live with several hundred merchants across South Africa – including brands like Lego, The North Face, LeLive, Duck Apparel, Ben Sherman, Scentimental, Popstrukt, Terbodore, Curve Gear and more – Stitch BNPL is now available to all merchants in South Africa. For Stitch Express businesses, it can be activated in minutes from the existing plugin dashboard with a widget that can be customised to match brand and theme design, with no custom development required. Enterprise merchants can add BNPL to their existing integration with no additional development required.
Stitch BNPL gives consumers the ability to choose their own repayment schedule, splitting purchases over 2-6 instalments. This offers more flexibility than most competing BNPL products currently available in South Africa. Importantly, customers remain on the merchant's site during checkout and KYC, and the payment experience remains consistent with the rest of the store.
The launch makes enterprise-grade BNPL accessible for e-commerce businesses of all sizes, without the integration complexity or minimum volume requirements that have historically kept flexible payment options out of reach for smaller merchants. With South Africa's e-commerce market projected to reach R133 billion by end of 2025, checkout experience is increasingly a competitive differentiator, and BNPL is one of the most effective tools for improving conversion and average order value, particularly for considered purchases.
"Stitch Express exists to make sure every South African e-commerce business has access to the same quality of payments infrastructure as the largest retailers in the country," said Junaid Dadan, Co-founder and President at Stitch. "BNPL has proven commercial impact: higher conversion, bigger baskets, and fewer abandoned carts. We've built it so that any merchant can go live the same day, and we're already seeing strong results from the merchants who've been using it."
Getting started with Stitch BNPL on Stitch Express:
- Existing Stitch Express merchants: activate BNPL directly from the dashboard — no development work required
- New merchants: sign up at express.stitch.money and install the Shopify or WooCommerce plugin or access the Stitch API
- Customers can choose their monthly instalment plan, based on their credit score (between 2-6 instalments)
- Full support available from the Stitch Express team
The Stitch payments platform powers payments for leading South African businesses including Takealot, MTN, Vodacom, TFG's Bash, Mr D and more. Stitch Express merchants can sign up at express.stitch.money or contact express@stitch.money. Enterprise merchants can reach out to the team to get started. DM
Stitch Express is a payments solution designed for e-commerce merchants that leverage platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Squarespace and more. It also offers an easy-to-integrate REST API. Express offers a set of curated, high-converting payment methods, built on the highly reliable Stitch platform, to enable a better, more seamless checkout experience. Sign up at express.stitch.money.
About Stitch
Stitch is a payments infrastructure company that helps businesses seamlessly connect to the financial system, so they can deliver a better user experience and optimize operations. Headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa, Stitch launched in February 2021 and has global staff. Stitch offers all popular online payment methods as a Payments Service Provider, as well as in-person payments at POS. Its platform supports a variety of pay-in methods and solutions; financial and payment management solutions; and Payouts. Learn more at stitch.money.