STRIPE ACQUIRES NIGERIAN FINTECH STARTUP PAYSTACK FOR $200 MILLION
American financial and software company Stripe has acquired Nigeria’s FINTECH startup Paystack for N200 million making it the biggest Startup acquisition in Nigeria, and Stripe’s biggest startup acquisition till date.
Paystack is a Nigerian financial service company that provides quick and secure payment services for online and offline transactions using API. The company was founded by two gentlemen, Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi in 2015.
Paystack currently has about 60,000 customers including SMEs, fintech, educational institutions and online betting companies.
Although the terms of the deal have not been disclosed, the founders say Paystack will continue to operate independently, adding that the acquisition would help Paystack expand into other African countries.
“For us, it’s about the mission. I’m driven by the mission to accelerate payments on the continent, and I am convinced that Stripe will help us get there faster. It is a very natural move,” Shola Akinlade, one of the founders and CEO of Paystack told TechCrunch.
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The acquisition lends credence to the international community’s confidence in Africa’s e-commerce potential.
Patrick Collison, Stripe’s co-founder and CEO, described Africa’s e-commerce market as an “enormous opportunity”.
“In absolute numbers, Africa may be smaller right now than other regions, but online commerce will grow about 30% every year. And even with wider global declines, online shoppers are growing twice as fast. Stripe thinks on a longer time horizon than others because we are an infrastructure company. We are thinking of what the world will look like in 2040-2050,” Collison said.
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