Stripe Acquires Paystack To Enter Into The African Market

Nigerian fintech startup, Paystack has been acquired by Stripe, a United States fintech company that offers similar payment gateways service for companies and businesses. The amount of the operation is over $ 200 million, according to sources familiar with the matter.

He added that he believes the potential of Africa's e-commerce market "In absolute numbers, Africa may be smaller right now than other regions, but online commerce will grow about 30% every year".

The Silicon Valley firm is unlisted but valued at $36 billion, according to investor website PitchBook. It has 60 000 clients in Nigeria and Ghana and claims to process more than half of all online transactions in Nigeria.

According to Paystack, it will continue to operate independently, growing its operations in Africa and adding more worldwide payment methods.

"There is enormous opportunity", said Patrick Collison, Stripe's co-founder and CEO said in a interview with Nigerian tech authority, Techcrunch.

In 2018, Stripe led the $8m Series A funding round in Paystack and - once this deal closes - will be Stripe's largest acquisition to date.

Paystack is now processing over half of all digital or online transactions made in Nigeria.

"Paystack was not for sale when Stripe approached us", Akinlade, who co-founded the company with Ezra Olubi, said. He also indicated that the pace of online shoppers in Africa was growing at twice the rate for the rest of the world, further highlighting an important aspect of why the deal made sense. The company has raised over US$10-million from both global and local investors including Stripe, Visa, Tencent, Y Combinator, Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund, Blue Haven Ventures and Ventures Platform. Help people start and scale internet businesses, increase the gross domestic product (GDP) of the internet. "And I think about how over the next few years, there are going to be bigger exits because now it can be done".

The acquisition would allow organisations of all sizes to easily collect payments from around the world, the statement said.

Stripe is a technology company building economic infrastructure for the internet.

Founded in 2015 by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi, when Akinlade, while having fun, built a quick way of integrating a card transaction into a web page, Paystack now has around 60,000 customers.