I am writing this from our Portside Tower office in Cape Town, where the team has just wrapped up two years of work building something we believed in before most of the people around us understood what we were trying to do. Today I am glad to share that FloatPay has closed an angel funding round. This is what it means for where we are going.
Why We Raised
When we launched FloatPay in late 2023, the goal was to build BNPL that was genuinely compliant with the National Credit Act and genuinely useful to ordinary South African consumers — not a grey-area product that hoped regulation would not catch up, and not a product that only served the top end of the income distribution.
Operating under the NCA with full affordability assessments and transparent fee disclosure costs more to build than operating outside the framework. We made that choice deliberately. What we have learned over two years is that it also builds more sustainable merchant relationships, because merchants are increasingly asking whether their BNPL partner is NCA-registered before they onboard.
We raised this angel round to do three things: expand our merchant network significantly, invest in our technology platform — particularly the affordability assessment infrastructure — and grow the team that serves our merchants directly. None of these were optional at this stage of growth.
What Has Changed in Two Years
When we started, BNPL awareness in South Africa outside of tech-forward consumers in Cape Town and Johannesburg was limited. The concept of "pay in 4, no interest" needed explanation at every merchant meeting.
That has changed considerably. Merchants across fashion, electronics, home goods, and health and wellness are now coming to us having already decided they want BNPL — the question is which provider. Consumer awareness has grown, particularly among shoppers in the 22–35 age bracket who have used BNPL elsewhere and are looking for it when they shop at SA merchants. The market education phase is not over, but it has advanced meaningfully.
We have also learned a great deal about what merchants actually need. Integration speed matters. Settlement certainty matters. The ability to talk to a real person at FloatPay when something goes wrong matters — and that last point is one where a lot of fintech products underinvest. Part of what this funding enables is building the merchant success capacity to support a larger network without sacrificing the quality of that relationship.
What This Means for Our Merchants
For merchants already on the FloatPay network, the primary impact is faster product development and stronger merchant support. We have a roadmap of features that merchants have asked for repeatedly — including enhanced analytics in the Merchant Portal, same-day settlement availability for high-volume merchants, and improved in-store QR flow for physical retail. This round gives us the runway to build and launch these without the compromises that come with constrained resources.
For merchants who have been evaluating FloatPay but have not yet integrated, the funding is a signal of stability. We have a business that is growing, investors who believe in the model, and the capital to build the infrastructure that makes BNPL a long-term part of your payment stack — not a pilot that gets wound down if the market gets difficult.
What This Means for Shoppers
More stores. That is the most direct consumer-facing impact of network expansion. South African shoppers have told us consistently that the primary barrier to using FloatPay more often is the number of stores where they can use it. Expanding the merchant network is the answer to that feedback, and it is a significant part of how we are deploying this capital.
We are also investing in the consumer-facing experience of the affordability assessment process — making it faster for shoppers who are approved, and more clearly communicative for those who are not. The NCA's affordability assessment requirement is not just a compliance box — it is a genuine protection that prevents consumers from being approved for credit they cannot service. We want that process to feel like a benefit to the consumer, not a barrier.
On Being Angel-Backed in the SA Fintech Landscape
Angel funding in South Africa means something specific. It means patient capital from individuals who understand the SA market and believe in the long-term opportunity — not institutional capital with a five-quarter return horizon. Our investors understand that building a BNPL business correctly, with full NCA compliance and responsible lending practices, takes longer than building one that cuts corners on both. They are backing the sustainable version.
We are not claiming this round makes us the largest or most visible BNPL provider in South Africa. We are saying it gives us what we need to build the product and the merchant network that earns that position over time. The South African consumer credit market is large enough and underserved enough that there is room for a BNPL provider that does this right — and we intend to be that provider.
The Road Ahead
The priorities this funding enables are in a deliberate sequence. First: merchant network expansion, specifically targeting the mid-market independent retail sector that has been most vocal about wanting BNPL but found onboarding too slow or uncertain. Second: the affordability assessment infrastructure that will position FloatPay correctly as bureau reporting requirements in the SA BNPL sector evolve. Third: the in-store QR flow that lets physical retailers offer split payment without a separate terminal or hardware investment.
We are also investing in data infrastructure that will let us publish genuinely useful category-level insights for SA merchants — not marketing material dressed as research, but transaction data analysis that helps retailers understand how BNPL affects basket composition in their specific category. We have the data to do this meaningfully; we have not had the engineering bandwidth to build the reporting layer properly until now.
None of this is a pivot or a shift in strategy. It is the original plan executed with more resources and less constraint. The thesis has always been simple: South Africa needs a BNPL provider that operates with full NCA compliance, treats responsible lending as a feature rather than a cost, and builds the merchant-side product quality that earns long-term partnerships. That thesis has not changed. What has changed is our capacity to execute it at scale.
Thank you to the merchants who have trusted us with their checkout, the shoppers who have used FloatPay and paid on time, and the team who has built this with care and integrity. The work continues.
— Alex Forsyth-Thompson, Founder & CEO, FloatPay
Want to be part of the next phase of FloatPay's growth? Join our merchant network or get in touch with our team.