Founded in 2016 by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi, Paystack builds technology to help Africa’s best businesses grow from new startups to market leaders launching new business models.
Paystack makes it easy for businesses to accept secure payments from multiple local and global payment channels, and then they also provide tools to help you retain existing customers, and acquire new ones.
As makers and business owners themselves, they are inspired by a vision of millions of exceptional businesses across the continent that are profitable, envied, and loved.
Paystack enables businesses in Africa to routinely go toe to toe with the best companies on the planet, and win.
Paystack also points to how talented people in the region are identifying problems in the market and building technology to help fix them, as a way of improving how people can transact, and in turn, economic outcomes more generally.
The company got its start back when Akinlade, built a quick way of integrating a card transaction into a web page, and it was the simplicity of how it worked that spurred him and his co-founder to think of how to develop that into something others could use.
Paystack currently has around 60,000 customers, including small businesses, larger corporates, fintech, educational institutions, and online betting companies, and the plan will be for it to continue operating independently.
How it Works
Paystack For Entrepreneurs
Paystack helps businesses like yours get paid quickly and securely from anyone, anywhere in the world.
Whether you’re selling on Instagram, in a physical store, or even without a website, Paystack’s collection of payment tools will help you get paid.
Paystack For Corporates
Paystack helps many of the largest corporate and government organizations in Nigeria get paid quickly and securely.
From airlines to universities to state-wide tax collecting, Paystack helps corporates and government bodies collect payments quickly and securely.
Paystack For International Companies
Paystack has a robust suite of well-documented payment APIs and deep knowledge of the Nigerian payments landscape, making us ideal partners for international technology companies looking to accept payments in Nigeria.
Paystack For Fintechs
Developers love their thorough, well-documented APIs that let you build everything from simple weekend projects to complex financial products serving hundreds of thousands of customers. If you can imagine it, you can build it with Paystack.
Paystack For Schools
Whether you’re a school administrator, or building school management platforms for educational institutions, Paystack has everything you need to manage payments.
Paystack For Betting
Paytack has a comprehensive payments suite with everything you need to scale your online betting business.
Fraud Detection
Paystack’s combination of automated and manual fraud systems protects you from fraudulent transactions and associated chargeback claims.
The traditional chargeback process can be slow and expensive. Paystack is the only payment gateway that lets you manage chargebacks efficiently from your Dashboard and you can receive payments automatically in your corporate bank account within 24 hours.
Additionally, you can give specific members of your team exactly the permissions they need to do their jobs, and control exactly what they can see and do on your Paystack Dashboard.
Payments
The internet has no borders, and neither should your business. With Paystack, you can accept payments from international customers, wherever they are in the world.
You can accept payments from internationally-issued cards or via Apple Pay, display prices in USD, and also get settled in USD.
Paystack also makes available localized payment options such as mobile money that are popular in certain regions of the world and build custom, in-person payment experiences that increase customer loyalty and lifetime value.
Additionally, you can track your most important business metrics on your mobile device and even monitor info such as sales, customer information, success rates, and more.
Pricing
Paystack only charges a tiny fee per transaction, which means they only make money when you do, and they also work hard to ensure every transaction succeeds.
This is because Paystack is a growth engine for a new generation of innovative, forward-looking organizations operating in Africa.
Founders
Shola Akinlade
Shola Akinlade is the Co-founder and CEO at Paystack.
In 2022, Akinlade founded a football club, Sporting Lagos F.C. which he notes is a platform for community development and social change.
Shola Akinlade was conferred with the Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) by President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria in recognition of his contributions to the advancement of technology in finance and business.
Sola attended St. Gregory’s College for his secondary education. In 2006, he graduated with a degree in Computer Science from Babcock University.
Shola’s career started at Heineken where he worked on their database management as a management trainee and moved on to being a software engineer with banks. In 2016, Shola and Ezra Olubi started Paystack.
Ezra Olubi
Ezra Olubi is the CTO and Co-Founder at Paystack.
Ezra is a vibrant and self-determined young man who gave his everything for programming he was nominated and won a couple of awards including Young programmer of the year, Programmer of the year, etc from QBASIC to Visual BASIC and has finally matured into one of the best programmers in the country today.
Ezra imparts knowledge, inspires, and mentors other young programmers and his success is there for all to see.
Ezra also studied at the University of Babcock and graduated with a degree in Computer Science.
Investors & Funding Rounds
Stripe
Stripe has announced that it has picked up another $600 million in funding for Paystack. One big reason for the funding was to expand its API-based payments services into more geographies.
For Paystack, the deal will give the company a lot more fuel in investment to build out further in Nigeria and expand to other markets.
Paystack had been on Stripe’s radar for some time before acquiring it. Like its U.S. counterpart, the Nigerian startup went through Y Combinator in 2016, and it was the first-ever startup out of Nigeria to get into the world-famous incubator.
Then, in 2018, Stripe led an $8 million funding round for Paystack, with others participating, including Visa and Tencent.
Main Competitors
Perpay: This is an all-in-one FinTech app providing underserved consumers with an easy way to make purchases, pay over time, & build credit.
YooMoney: it is an electronic payments service that offers safe, reliable, and easy methods of paying online for users.
Interswitch: This is an integrated digital payments and commerce company designed to make payments an easy and enjoyable experience.
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