Paystack

Industry	Fintech
Founded	2015
Founder	Shola Akinlade, Ezra Olubi
Headquarters	Lagos, Nigeria
Parent	Stripe
Website	Paystack.com

Paystack is a Nigerian financial technology company that offers payment processing services to businesses and was acquired by Irish-American financial services company Stripe for $200M in 2020.^[1][2] Its headquarters is located in Lagos, Nigeria.^[3]

Paystack was founded in 2015 by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi, who met at Babcock University and worked in banking and IT before founding Paystack.^[3][4] In November 2015, it was accepted by the startup accelerator Y Combinator.^[5] The public launch of Paystack was in 2016, as the product came out of beta. and Paystack Starter Businesses was launched in early 2018.^[6][7]

In 2016, it raised $1.3M seed funding from Tencent and other investors.^[8] In 2018, it raised $8M in a Series A funding led by Irish-American financial services company Stripe.^[9] It was acquired in 2020 by Stripe for $200M in a bid to extend Stripe's reach in Africa. Before the acquisition, Paystack was reported to have been used by over 60,000 businesses in Nigeria and Ghana for the collection of online and offline payments.^[1]

• Paystack launched a payments solution integrated with E-commerce platform Shopify to allow more African retailers to sell their goods on the platform in 2016.^[10]
• It was selected as the preferred payment partner of open-source eCommerce solution WooCommerce in 2021.^[11]
• It launched Pay with Apple Pay on its platform in 2021.^[12]
• It launched a partnership with Accounting software solution Xero in 2022 that will allow Xero users in Africa to add a 'Pay with Paystack' button to their Xero invoices.^[13]