Africa’s AI Startup Race Is Expanding With a New Seychelles-Based AI Platform

Seychelles-based fintech Fusepay has launched Fuse360, an AI-native operating system for wholesalers, distributors, and manufacturers — pushing the company beyond payments into enterprise software.

The platform launched in Seychelles in July 2026, with expansion to Mauritius scheduled for September, followed by selected East and Southern African markets before the end of the year.

Licensed as a payment service provider by the Central Bank of Seychelles, Fusepay offers two complementary products that work together as one AI-native financial operating system for trade businesses.

Fuse360 handles inventory, orders, invoicing, credit, collections and retailer relationships, while FusePay enables payments and supplier settlements through licensed payment infrastructure.

Founded in 2024 by CEO Vidhyasahar Thiyagarajan and CTO Francesco Rocchi, who grew up around family retail and wholesale businesses in Seychelles, the company built the product around problems they had witnessed firsthand.

The company has raised over $350,000 in pre-seed funding from investors including Hustle Fund, Everywhere Ventures, First Check Ventures, Velocity Digital, and angel investor Ashwin Ravichandran.

The platform's AI agents automate repetitive tasks such as payment reconciliation, collections, reporting, customer credit monitoring, and operational analysis. As Thiyagarajan noted: "We didn't build Fuse360 because the world needed another ERP.

We built it because we saw businesses spending more time managing disconnected systems than growing their business. AI gives us the opportunity to rethink how trade businesses should operate from the ground up."

"We didn't build Fuse360 because the world needed another ERP. We built it because we saw businesses spending more time managing disconnected systems than growing their business. AI gives us the opportunity to rethink how trade businesses should operate from the ground up." – Vidhyasahar Thiyagarajan, CEO of Fusepay

Fusepay's launch reflects a broader shift in Africa's AI ecosystem: startups are moving from experimentation toward specialized commercial products built around specific problems.

As Yewande Odumosu noted, "In 2026, the most valuable AI deployments in African tech will shift away from experimentation toward data-accurate, production-grade systems embedded in enterprise, financial services, and government workflows".

The momentum is visible across the continent. Nigeria's Nearpays recently became the first African company to win the UN's AI for Good Innovation Factory, while sovereign AI company Dream raised $260 million at a $3 billion valuation.

Egypt's Fincart raised $2.8 million for an AI-powered operating system for e-commerce merchants, and Nigeria's PaySureFy launched Africa's first AI-powered cross-border escrow and trust infrastructure.

As intra-African trade continues to grow and the African Continental Free Trade Area deepens cross-border commercial activity, the adoption of integrated digital tools could accelerate.

With AI projected to add as much as $1.5 trillion to Africa's economy by 2035, the continent's startups are increasingly building solutions designed for local infrastructure challenges.

Fusepay's expansion plans reflect this trajectory, targeting growing demand for integrated trade and payment solutions. The question is no longer whether Africa will participate in the AI economy, but whether its startups can scale these specialized solutions to become global competitors.