Paycorp announces sale of stake in leading emerging market payments enabler, Tutuka, to Apis Partners

Paycorp Group (“Paycorp”) today announced the sale of its stake in Tutuka, a global payments enabler in emerging markets, to global financial services investors Apis Partners.

Paycorp, an investee company of leading growth markets investor Actis, acquired a stake in Tutuka in 2015. Today, the company processes over US$ 1.2 billion in transactions annually for clients across 19 countries in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Southeast Asia. Tutuka will continue to be led by the founding team, who will retain a majority of their interest in the business.

Tutuka is well known for its unique processor plus model, which enables fintechs, mobile wallets, apps, and banks across emerging markets to easily issue Mastercard and Visa payment products, such as physical or virtual cards that are linked to the values in their customers’ wallets or accounts.

As part of Paycorp over the past five years, Tutuka has more than tripled in size, rapidly expanding their international presence, launching programmes with clients such as Octopus in Hong Kong, Grab in Southeast Asia, MTN in Africa as well as other programmes in the Middle East and Latin America. Apis’ investment aims to support Tutuka’s growth into new markets through organic and inorganic expansion, as well as to broaden the client base in existing markets.

Steven Kark, Founder and Group CEO of Paycorp, said: “Tutuka has been a fantastic success story, driven by a dynamic leadership team. This is a natural progression for the business and we look forward to seeing Tutuka grow and thrive in its partnership with Apis.”

Matteo Stefanel, Apis Partners’ Managing Partner and Co-Founder, highlighted that: “the mobile wallet ecosystem is forecast to grow at over 45% p.a. through to 2021, and we believe that Tutuka is extremely well positioned to capitalise on this growth while delivering significant value for these ecosystem owners.”

Natalie Kolbe, partner at Actis, said: “We are very proud of Paycorp’s investment in Tutuka and we wish CEO Rowan and his team the very best in realising their ambitions to deliver financial inclusion.”