Paystack is a Nigerian
financial technology
Fintech, a portmanteau of "financial technology", refers to firms using new technology to compete with traditional financial methods in the delivery of financial services. Artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, and big data are ...
company that offers payment processing services to businesses and was acquired by Irish-American financial services company
Stripe
Stripe, striped, or stripes may refer to:
Decorations
* Stripe (pattern), a line or band that differs in colour or tone from an adjacent surface
* Racing stripe, a vehicle decoration
* Service stripe, a decoration of the U.S. military
Entertainme ...
for $200M in 2020.
Its headquarters is located in Lagos,
Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of G ...
.
History
Paystack was founded in 2015 by
Shola Akinlade and
Ezra Olubi who met at
Babcock University
Babcock University is a private Christian co-educational Nigerian university owned and operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Nigeria. The university is located at Ilishan-Remo, Ogun State, Nigeria, equidistant between Ibadan and Lago ...
and worked in banking and IT before founding Paystack.
In November 2015, it became the first Nigerian company to be accepted into the startup accelerator
Y Combinator
Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, Str ...
. It expanded to Ghana in 2018 and to South Africa in 2021.
Funding
In 2016, it raised $1.3M seed funding from
Tencent
Tencent Holdings Ltd. () is a Chinese multinational technology and entertainment conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimedia companies in the world based on revenue. It is also the wo ...
and other investors. In 2018, it raised $8M in a Series A funding led by Irish-American financial services company
Stripe
Stripe, striped, or stripes may refer to:
Decorations
* Stripe (pattern), a line or band that differs in colour or tone from an adjacent surface
* Racing stripe, a vehicle decoration
* Service stripe, a decoration of the U.S. military
Entertainme ...
. 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.
Partnerships
* Paystack launched a payments solution integrated with E-commerce platform
Shopify
Shopify Inc. is a Canadian multinational e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. Shopify is the name of its proprietary e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. The Shopify platform offers online ret ...
to allow more African retailers to sell their goods on the platform in 2016.
* It was selected as the preferred payment partner of open-source eCommerce solution
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress. It is designed for small to large-sized online merchants using WordPress. Launched on September 27, 2011, the plugin quickly became popular for its simplicity to install and customiz ...
in 2021.
* It launched Pay with
Apple Pay
Apple Pay is a mobile payment service by Apple Inc. that allows users to make payments in person, in iOS apps, and on the web. It is supported on these Apple devices: iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, and Mac. It digitizes and can replace a c ...
on its platform in 2021.
* It launched a partnership with Accounting software solution
Xero
Xero may refer to:
*Xero (band), an Australian punk band
*Xero (company), a New Zealand financial software company
* ''Xero'' (film), an experimental 2010 German film
*Xero (Linkin Park), an early name for the band Linkin Park, as well as a demo ...
in 2022 that will allow Xero users in Africa to add a 'Pay with Paystack' button to their Xero invoices.
See also
*
Interswitch
Interswitch is a leading African integrated payments and digital commerce platform company headquartered in Lagos. Founded in 2002 in Nigeria, as a transaction switching and processing company with national focus, Interswitch progressively evolved ...
*
PayPal
PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...
*
Stripe (company)
Stripe, Inc. is an Irish-American financial services and software as a service (SaaS) company dual-headquartered in South San Francisco, California, United States and Dublin, Ireland. The company primarily offers payment processing software and ...
*
E-commerce payment system
An e-commerce payment system (or an electronic payment system) facilitates the acceptance of electronic payment for offline transfer, also known as a subcomponent of electronic data interchange (EDI), e-commerce payment systems have become incr ...
*
List of online payment service providers
The following is a list of notable online payment service providers and payment gateway providing companies, their platform base and the countries they offer services in:
(POS -- Point of Sale
The point of sale (POS) or point of purchase ...
*
Payment service provider
A payment service provider (PSP) is a third-party company that assists businesses to accept electronic payments, such as credit cards and debit cards payments. PSPs act as intermediaries between those who make payments, i.e. consumers, and thos ...
References
{{Reflist
Nigerian companies established in 2015
Financial technology companies of Nigeria
Y Combinator companies