From a Durban garage to the Premier League, Swiffy is taking African fintech onto the global stage with a landmark partnership with Hull City.
Source: Supplied. Swiffy co-founders Neil Schwartzman, Jadie Naicker and Christian Di Zio.
The South African-born payments infrastructure business has become the first of its kind from the country to secure an official partnership with a Premier League club, giving the rapidly growing fintech a powerful international platform.
As Hull City returns to the top flight for the 2026/27 season, the partnership will boost Swiffy’s global visibility while supporting its ambitions to strengthen its South African presence and expand across key African markets.
Founded in South Africa and headquartered in Durban, Swiffy provides digital payment services to businesses operating across African markets. Its end-to-end payments stack enables merchants to manage deposits, payouts and settlement around the clock, helping businesses move money faster and more efficiently across the continent.
The partnership comes as Hull City returns to the Premier League for the 2026/27 season and brings together two organisations entering an important period of growth. As an official partner of Hull City, Swiffy will work with the Club throughout the 2026/27 season, with the partnership spanning digital and traditional media, and in-stadium activity and placing the South African fintech brand in front of one of sport’s most extensive international audiences.
More than visibility
For Swiffy, however, the partnership is about more than visibility just in the UK. It provides an opportunity to take an African fintech brand onto a global stage while building greater awareness and credibility among customers, partners and businesses in South Africa and across the continent.
It is also a milestone with personal significance for Swiffy co-founders Jadie Naicker, Christian Di Zio and Neil Schwartzman. Soccer has been part of all three founders’ lives from a young age, making the opportunity to see a business they built in Durban become an official partner of a Premier League club both surreal and deeply meaningful.
“We’re really pleased to welcome Swiffy to the Hull City family,” said Joe Clutterbrook, chief operating officer at Hull City. Swiffy is a business with a clear understanding of the African market and a strong focus on making digital payments work better for its customers. There’s a natural alignment between their ambition to connect businesses and customers across the continent and our own ambition to connect Hull City with supporters around the world.”
Soccer’s ability to connect audiences across borders is an important part of the partnership for Swiffy. English football in particular has a passionate and highly engaged following throughout Africa, giving the business a globally recognised platform through which it can grow its profile while remaining focused on the markets most important to its expansion strategy.
This alignment between global reach and African relevance is particularly significant as Swiffy looks ahead to its next phase of growth. By the end of 2027, the business is aiming to have further strengthened its position in South Africa, established a growing presence across key African markets and built the brand recognition and visibility needed to support its longer-term international ambitions.
Swiffy’s infrastructure has been developed specifically for online businesses operating in complex and high-volume payment environments, including foreign exchange, iGaming and sports-betting operators. Its technology brings deposits, payouts and settlement into one integrated payments stack, giving merchants the infrastructure needed to transact efficiently across African markets.
A dream realised
Swiffy co-founders Jadie Naicker, Christian Di Zio and Neil Schwartzman commented: “We’re incredibly proud that a business built here in South Africa is stepping onto the Premier League stage with Hull City. It is a major milestone for Swiffy, but it also says something bigger about the calibre of technology and fintech businesses being built on the African continent.
"There is also something very personal about this partnership for the three of us. We all grew up with football as part of our lives and have followed the game for many years. You grow up watching English football and seeing the history, scale and global influence of these clubs without necessarily imagining that one day a business you built in Durban (that originated with three friends starting a business out of a garage) would become an official partner of one of them. In that sense, it really is a dream come true and still feels slightly surreal.”
The trio continued, saying, “Hull City’s return to the Premier League represents ambition, resilience and a determination to compete at the highest level. Those qualities strongly resonate with the journey we have been on in building Swiffy and expanding our payments infrastructure across Africa. We are excited to be part of Hull City’s next chapter and look forward to building a partnership that extends well beyond the pitch.”
This partnership forms part of Hull City’s continued focus on developing its international presence following the Club’s return to the Premier League for the first time in a decade. As the Tigers re-establish themselves in English football’s top flight, Hull City will continue to develop partnerships capable of connecting the Club with supporters and businesses in key international markets, including across Africa.
