Introducing Between the Seams, a podcast by Stitch

At Stitch, we’ve always believed that the most interesting parts of building a business often happen in the spaces people rarely see.

We talk a lot about “seamless” experiences in payments: a checkout that just works, a payment made in one click and automation that solves a week's worth of manual reconciliation in seconds. But to get to seamless, you have to roll up your sleeves and look closely at the seams themselves. You have to understand the messy, complex infrastructure, the hyper-local cultural nuances and the gritty execution required to build something that lasts.

We’re excited to announce the launch of our new podcast: Between the Seams.

In a world continually dominated by AI, automation and computer-generated content, we wanted to offer more human insights, based on the conversations we’re fortunate to have every day at Stitch. We believe there is a reason podcasts continue to grow as a medium in today’s increasingly isolated landscape.

Each episode of Between the Seams features a member of the Stitch team speaking with a leader or builder that has been responsible for shaping an area of commerce, payments or technology, in South Africa and around the world.

Why now?

South Africa’s business ecosystem is no longer “emerging”; it is undoubtedly competing at a global level. As the world moves toward an era of AI-driven infrastructure, e-commerce continues to evolve and the rules of the game continue to change, the stakes for how we build have never been higher. 

We wanted to create a space where some of the leaders, builders and investors who have been in the trenches inside businesses in South Africa and around the world as they’ve grown, could sit down with members of the team at Stitch to discuss real stories of growth, scaling, engineering and more.

What to expect

Between the Seams offers a deep dive into the architecture of modern businesses at scale. We’ll tackle the specific challenges that builders face today, including:

• Engineering for volatility: How do you build a tech stack that thrives during a 100x traffic spike on Black Friday?
• The trust deficit: How did BNPL in South Africa become a foundational infrastructure tool rather than a marketing play?
• Modernizing legacy “guts”: How do you transform 40-year-old enterprise systems into a health center of the future without breaking the core business?
• The AI frontier: What does “LLM discoverability” mean for the future of your inventory and data mapping?
• Global vs. local: Why do global giants often fail when they try to “copy-paste” their models into the South African market?

Our inaugural season

We’re kicking off the series with conversations that span the full spectrum of the ecosystem:

• Episode 1: Stitch CTO Priyen Pillay sits down with Ashley Martin (CTO of Superbalist) to discuss building for the next frontier of Agentic Commerce.
• Episode 2: Ashish Aggarwal (Partner at PayPal Ventures) offers Stitch President Junaid Dadan a global lens on local innovation and why the “death of the checkout app” is imminent.
• Episode 3: Aliyah Allie (MD of X, Bigly Labs at Dis-Chem Group) speaks to Stitch President Junaid Dadan about the high-stakes world of digital healthcare transformation and how she’s managing 40 years of technical debt.
• Episode 4: Charley Ma (Pathlight Ventures, early Plaid/Ramp/Alloy) joins Stitch CEO Kiaan Pillay to discuss the “execution moat” and why the boring problems are often the ones worth billions.
• And more to come!

We spend our days working alongside the teams building some of South Africa’s most significant businesses. Our investors and partners span global fintech networks that most companies in this market simply do not have access to. Between the Seams is our way of making those conversations public and shining a spotlight on South African businesses that we believe are building at a globally competitive level.