If you're running digital payments across African markets, your fraud tools were probably designed for a different continent. Most global fraud detection systems were built around credit card data, European KYC assumptions, and predictable user behaviour. 

In Africa, money moves through mobile wallets, USSD, agent networks and stablecoins. A single fraud attack can span a mobile wallet top-up, a card transaction and a bank transfer before most systems fire their first alert.

That's the gap Orca Fraud was built to fill. The platform embeds directly into live payment flows, using machine learning models trained on real African transaction data to make fraud decisions in real time, without slowing legitimate payments.

Thalia Pillay (CEO) and Carla Wilby (CTO) are both former engineers at Stitch, one of South Africa's most prominent payments infrastructure startups. Pillay also worked in AgriTech. Wilby previously founded an edtech startup that went through the Google Accelerator and interned at AWS. They launched Orca in 2024 after seeing first-hand how African payment data is fragmented across rails, informal in structure, and shaped by conditions that Western training datasets don't capture.

The Stitch background is relevant because it means both founders built a payments infrastructure at scale before starting a fraud company. They understand the plumbing, which is exactly where fraud detection needs to sit to be effective.

The traction number is striking. Orca monitors over $5 billion in monthly transaction volume across 70+ countries, working with major banks, telcos, and payment providers. The company says firms using the platform can process fraud decisions in real time across multiple payment channels simultaneously, covering cards, mobile wallets, stablecoins, and bank transfers in a single view.

The oversubscribed seed was led by Norrsken22, a returning investor that also backed the company's $55,000 pre-seed in 2024. OneDayYes, Enza Capital (led by Sir John Lazar), and CV VC Africa also participated. Total disclosed funding now sits at roughly $2.4 million.

For context, INTERPOL's Operation Serengeti between December 2025 and January 2026 led to 651 arrests across 16 African countries and uncovered scams linked to more than $45 million in losses. The fraud problem on the continent is not theoretical. It's accelerating, and 67% of financial institutions expect more attacks in 2026, particularly targeting mobile money, crypto, and peer-to-peer payment platforms.

The $5 billion monthly volume figure is impressive, but volume monitored and revenue generated are different things. Orca is not yet profitable, according to its own disclosure. The seed capital needs to fund engineering, deeper integrations with enterprise clients, and expansion into new markets, potentially including Latin America and Southeast Asia. Whether $2.35 million is enough runway to reach the metrics needed for a Series A depends on how quickly enterprise contracts convert to recurring revenue.

There's also the competitive question. Global players like Sift and Sumsub operate in this space, and while Orca argues they weren't built for African payment rails, those companies have the resources to localise if the market proves big enough. On the other side, the PSPs themselves (Paystack, Flutterwave, Stitch) could build fraud layers into their own platforms. Orca's positioning as a neutral layer across multiple PSPs is smart, but it requires ongoing integration with platforms that could eventually become competitors.

The all-female founding team is worth noting not as a feel-good detail but as a data point. In a funding environment where women-led startups across Africa receive a fraction of total venture capital, closing an oversubscribed seed in 16 months is a concrete counterpoint to the structural gap.

Orca is solving a problem that is getting worse, not better. Digital payment adoption across Africa is accelerating, and fraud is scaling with it. The founding team has the right technical background, the traction numbers are real, and the investor profile (a returning lead investor plus a credible angel syndicate) signals genuine confidence.

The next 12 months will show whether Orca can convert enterprise pipeline into the kind of recurring revenue that supports a strong Series A. If they can, this becomes one of the more compelling B2B infrastructure plays to come out of Cape Town in recent years.

This news first appeared in our 11 March ‘26 edition on Bantu Stall team experiences.

For a look into the future of fintech in Africa, get yourself to our AI and fintech event featuring OpenAI, Paystack and Stripe in April 2026.

See Orca and Petl Pay in the recent Visa accelerator as SA reclaimed the top VC spot in South Africa VC 2025. Read how payment orchestration is evolving in the NjiaPay seed round. And explore how Lula secured R340m in FMO funding to scale SME lending.

Also, see the latest on WhatsApp research platform Yazi’s funding round close, all the ventures that raised investment in our roundup of March funding rounds in SA and the Cape Town FinTech powering FlySafair’s Apple and Google Pay in how Stitch does payments for enterprise.

Plus: See what Orca believes are the keys to building true FinTech fraud intelligence in SA.

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