Peach Payments Review

Peach Payments is a Cape Town payments company founded in 2012 by Rahul Jain and Andreas Demleitner. Its South African operating company is Peach Payment Services (Pty) Ltd, and Jain is still chief executive. It started as an online payment gateway and now also offers payment links, recurring billing, payouts to bank accounts, card terminals and, through a partner, business cash advances. It has offices in South Africa, Kenya and Mauritius, and in 2025 it agreed to buy PayDunya, a Senegalese gateway operating in six French-speaking West African countries. Apis Partners led a US$31 million (EUR 29 million) Series A in 2023; Launch Africa, an early investor, sold its stake to 27four's Nebula Fund in 2026. That changed who the investors are, not who controls the company. As of October 2026 its fees page lists 2.95% + R1.50 per transaction (ex VAT) for 3-D Secure payments on South African cards under its Growth plan, with no setup or monthly fee and free next-business-day settlement in rands. Kenyan and Mauritian pricing is quoted per account. Its published merchant agreement has no minimum term and lets you cancel on written notice.

Estimated annual cost at three realistic processing volumes, using Peach Payments’s published online rate plus monthly fees. Real costs vary with average transaction size, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.

What Peach Payments is

Peach Payments is a Cape Town payments company that Rahul Jain and Andreas Demleitner founded in 2012. The South African operating company is Peach Payment Services (Pty) Ltd, whose registration number dates it to 2012, and it is based at Brickfield Canvas in Woodstock, Cape Town. Jain is chief executive. The group raised its 2023 Series A through Baobab Payments GmbH, which trades as Peach Payments. The company began as an online payment gateway for South African merchants. When it announced the Series A it called itself the second-largest online payment gateway in South Africa, with nearly 150 staff.

Its products now cover online checkout, payment links, subscriptions and stored cards, payouts to bank accounts, bank account verification, card terminals, and business cash advances offered with the lender Lulalend. Its contact page lists offices in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Nairobi and Moka (Mauritius), plus PayDunya offices in Senegal, Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso, Mali and Côte d'Ivoire.

Funding, acquisitions and ownership

Early backers included the 88mph accelerator (seed funding in 2013, according to Peach), Allan Gray and UW Ventures, and Launch Africa, which first invested in 2021. On 4 April 2023 Apis Growth Fund II, managed by the UK firm Apis Partners, announced a EUR 29 million (US$31 million) Series A investment, which needed South African Competition Commission approval. Peach later described the round as closed in late 2023.

Peach has made three acquisitions since then. In February 2024 it bought in-store payment technology from Exipay. On 22 July 2024 it announced the purchase of Operativa, a software firm that had built some of its core systems since 2022; Peach's own pages disagree on the date, since its later PayDunya release says June 2024 and its About page files the deal under 2023. On 3 April 2025 it announced an agreement to buy PayDunya, a Senegalese gateway serving more than 4,000 business customers in six West African countries, and said the deal was expected to complete within a few months. We found no announcement that it has completed, although Peach's contact page now lists PayDunya's offices. MyBroadband reported in April 2025, as the PayDunya deal was announced, that Peach had retrenched several staff.

In July 2026 Launch Africa Ventures sold its stake to 27four's Nebula Fund in a secondary transaction. No price was disclosed. The sale changed who Peach's investors are; Peach was not sold, and co-founder Rahul Jain is still listed as chief executive.

Pricing in South Africa

Peach publishes South African pricing on its fees page and in an Annexure A fee schedule attached to its downloadable merchant agreement. As of October 2026 the Growth plan for SMEs charges, excluding VAT:

• South African Visa, Mastercard and Amex cards with 3-D Secure: 2.95% + R1.50 per transaction
• International cards, and local cards without 3-D Secure or on recurring billing: 3.50% + R1.50
• Pay by bank and Capitec Pay: 1.50% + R1.50
• Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay and Scan to Pay: 2.95% + R1.50
• Buy now, pay later: Payflex 5.25% + R4 + R1.50; Happy Pay 4.99% + R4 + R1.50; Zeropay 4.75% + R2 + R1.50; PayJustNow 5.35% + R4.80 + R1.50 plus R199 a month
• Mobicred and RCS cards: 3.50% + R1.50; MoneyBadger crypto: 1.5% + R1.50
• Stored cards for subscriptions or one-click checkout: R200 a month, plus R3.00 per card registration
• Refunds, reversals and chargebacks: R3.00 each, plus R350 per disputed transaction
• No setup fee and no monthly account fee; Enterprise accounts pay R300 a month

Read three things before comparing these rates. First, the R1.50 is a processing fee that the agreement's fee schedule applies to all attempted transactions, whether they succeed or fail, and each transaction type counts separately, so a pre-authorisation followed by a capture is billed twice. (Clause 4.3 exempts attempts that never reach the bank or payment-method provider, such as timeouts.) Second, the agreement adds a 0.2% platform fee on payments from Shopify and Wix stores. Third, the two documents do not always agree: the instalment provider Float is listed at 5.10% + R4 on the fees page (without the R1.50 shown against other methods) but at 6.50% + R24 in the agreement, which applies the R1.50 to every method, and PayPal and Diners Club are not priced in either. The Enterprise plan, aimed at merchants processing more than R500,000 a month, has volume-based rates and can use the merchant's own bank acquiring account.

Pricing in Kenya and Mauritius

Peach does not publish rates outside South Africa. On its fees page, with the country switcher set to Kenya or Mauritius, both plans show 'Custom volume-based rates', and every line, including the account and tokenisation fees, reads 'volume-based'. The only figure shown is that there is no setup fee. The Kenyan checkout supports local and international cards, M-Pesa and PayPal. The Mauritian one supports cards, Diners Club, Apple Pay, Blink by Emtel, MCB Juice, MauCAS QR and PayPal. Get pricing and the settlement schedule in writing before you sign.

How it works

On a standard account Peach acts as a payment facilitator. Your customers pay Peach on your behalf, and Peach holds the money in a separate bank account and passes it on to you net of refunds, disputes and fees. Enterprise merchants with their own acquiring bank account use Peach as a gateway only, and the bank settles them directly. You integrate through hosted checkout, an embedded widget, an API, mobile SDKs or ready-made plugins for Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, Magento, OpenCart, nopCommerce, Ecwid and Gravity Forms. Payment links work without a website. The agreement lets Peach switch on new payment methods for your account automatically, along with their fees; you can opt out in writing or in the dashboard.

Payouts and holds

South African settlement is daily and free. Transactions on day T are paid on the next business day, Friday-to-Sunday transactions are paid together on Monday, and public-holiday transactions roll to the next business day. The fees page says Growth merchants get daily settlement after two weeks of trading. Settlement is in rands only, even when customers pay in another currency. Peach's settlement guide says acquiring-bank (ISO) accounts follow their bank's cycle instead.

The agreement lets Peach delay settlement while a dispute, suspected fraud, a compliance issue, missing KYC documents or an insolvency event is resolved, and it may ask for proof of delivery or tax invoices. It states that your balance with Peach is an unsecured debt Peach owes you, that Peach is not acting as a bank, trustee or escrow agent, and that any interest on the funds it holds belongs to Peach. Its in-store terms also allow a larger reserve or holdback if refund or chargeback rates are judged excessive. Peach also offers payouts from a pre-funded float, at R3.20 per EFT payout and R6.00 per real-time payout (ex VAT).

Contract and cancellation

The Merchant Service Agreement on Peach's legal page (Master Terms of Service, updated 22 July 2025) has no fixed term: it runs from activation until terminated. You can terminate at any time on written notice, and fees based on monthly usage apply for the month you give notice. It has no early-termination fee. Peach can end the service on 45 days' notice for any reason, or immediately in a list of cases that includes an unremedied breach after 14 days' notice, an instruction from a card scheme or acquirer, increased risk of loss or reputational harm, suspected fraud, and scheme fines. In those cases it may list you on Mastercard's MATCH database. Clause 4.5 says fees are adjusted by mutual agreement, although the agreement also says its fee schedule may be updated from time to time, and Peach can switch on new payment methods with their own fees unless you opt out. Each side's liability is capped at the fees paid in the previous three months. Fees are invoiced monthly and fall due within three business days, with interest at prime plus 2% on overdue amounts. If you pay by debit order, that mandate can be cancelled on 15 days' notice. Rented terminals stay Peach's property and must be returned within 14 days of termination.

Reputation and complaints

Peach has no Trustpilot profile that we could find. On HelloPeter, the main South African review site, it shows 2.7 stars from 7 reviews in the 12 months to October 2026, too few for a TrustIndex. That figure is much lower than its longer record: HelloPeter has tracked 148 reviews in total, and the all-time distribution it shows is 55.4% five-star and 36.5% one-star, which works out to roughly 3.4 stars, so ratings are polarised and have worsened recently. Four of the seven recent reviews are one-star complaints from shoppers who paid a merchant through Peach's checkout: delayed refunds, duplicate debits and a merchant the reviewer considered fraudulent. Two are five-star reviews from merchants praising the support team. Peach had replied to every negative review. Its Cape Town office has 3.5 stars from 173 reviews on Google Maps, again split between 97 five-star and 62 one-star ratings.

We found no regulatory enforcement action, fine or lawsuit naming Peach Payments as defendant. Its 2023 Series A required Competition Commission approval, which is a merger review rather than an enforcement action.

Who it suits

Peach fits a South African online business, from a sole proprietor upwards, that wants a broad local checkout (cards, pay by bank, Capitec Pay, buy now pay later, store cards and wallets), free next-day settlement and the freedom to leave without a fee. It also suits businesses selling in Kenya or Mauritius that want one provider across those markets, as long as they are prepared to negotiate pricing there. Merchants with many small or frequently declined transactions should model the R1.50 per-attempt fee. Shopify and Wix stores should add the 0.2% platform fee. Anyone who needs settlement outside rand from a South African account, or published in-store pricing, should look elsewhere or get those terms in writing.