South African fintech startup TurnStay has processed more than R1 billion, or roughly $61.5 million, in travel payments so far in 2026. It reached that milestone in just six months. And it happened only three years after the company was founded.
TurnStay was built to solve a problem that has quietly eaten into the margins of African tourism operators for years. Hotels, safari lodges, tour operators and villa agencies across the continent often pay far more than their counterparts in Europe or North America. All they want is to receive payment from international guests. But foreign exchange spreads, card network surcharges and cross-border acquiring fees stack up fast. For businesses competing for the same global travellers as everyone else, that extra cost cuts straight into profit.
The company was founded by Alon Stern, previously co-founder of Slide Financial, and James Hedley, who co-founded ticketing platform Quicket. Their pitch is simple in theory. It is harder in execution. They apply the same payment tricks used by the world’s largest booking platforms to African travel businesses that never had access to that kind of infrastructure before.
Here is how it works. TurnStay runs on a merchant-of-record model paired with payment orchestration. It processes card payments in the traveller’s home country. Then it settles funds locally using stablecoins. According to the company, this cuts payment fees by as much as 70 per cent. It also speeds up settlement times and improves booking conversion rates for merchants.
Clients already on the platform include some recognisable names in African luxury travel. Among them are Singita, Safari.com, Londolozi and The Capital. South Africa remains TurnStay’s home base. But the company says it is seeing growing activity in Mauritius, Kenya, Tanzania and Botswana too, as it works toward becoming pan-African travel payments infrastructure rather than a single-market player.
Stern described the milestone as proof of how far the company has travelled in a short time. Three years ago, he said, it was just two founders and an idea. Now, TurnStay processes more than a billion rand every six months for some of the biggest names in African travel.
The growth comes on the back of two funding rounds. TurnStay raised $300,000 in a pre-seed round in July 2024. It then closed a $2 million seed round in mid-2025, led by First Circle Capital, with backing from TLcom Capital, Enza Capital, Incisive Ventures, CVVC and Equitable Ventures. That capital has largely gone toward scaling the company’s payments infrastructure and expanding its footprint across the continent.
TurnStay currently operates as a licensed financial services provider in South Africa. It is also pursuing additional licensing in other markets. The goal, the company says, is to formalise and de-risk cross-border travel payments for its merchants. TurnStay has also signalled that it is preparing for a Series A raise to fund the next stage of its expansion.
Africa’s travel and tourism sector is worth more than $50 billion a year, and cross-border payment demand keeps climbing. That scale is exactly what TurnStay wants to capture. More African operators are competing for the same international travellers as their global rivals. So getting paid efficiently is becoming just as important as the destinations themselves.
