This post is about a Nigerian fintech company, Paystack.
Highlights:
- Serves the financial technology industry
- Founded in 2015 and acquired by Stripe in 2020
- Headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria
What is Paystack?
Paystack is a Nigerian financial technology company established in 2015. It focuses on providing payment processing services for businesses. Paystack currently has offices in Nigeria, Ghana, the United States, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates.
The company allows businesses in Africa to receive payments from anywhere in the world. More than 200,000 businesses rely on its platform for payment solutions. These include MTN, Bolt, Domino’s Pizza, AXA MANSARD, Air Peace, Piggyvest, Kuda, Ibom Air, Carbon, Betway, Filmhouse Cinemas, etc.
Businesses across all growth stages, no matter their type, can use Paystack to process payments. Hence, it is recommendable to startups, entrepreneurs, corporates, global brands, schools, and other kinds of establishments.
History – How It Started?
The company was founded by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi, who graduated from Babcock University, Ilishan-Remo, Ogun State. Both have served in the banking and Information Technology industry before creating Paystack.
However, it served only Nigerians until 2018, when its operations expanded to Ghana and South Africa in 2021.
Paystack was the first Nigerian company to be part of the Y Combinator, the best startup accelerator in the world. Its acceptance into the program was in November 2015.
Sometime in October 2020, Stripe, Inc., an Irish-American financial services and SaaS company acquired Paystack for $200m. At that time, it already had more than 60,000 users who were businesses in Nigeria and Ghana.
In 2021, Paystack was chosen as the most preferred payment partner of WooCommerce, an open-source WordPress plugin for e-commerce online payments.
Services and features
Here are some of Paystack’s features and services:
- Online and offline payments worldwide
- Well-documented APIs
- Instant funds transfers
- Advanced fraud detection to protect businesses and their customers via automated fraud monitoring and PCI-DSS-certified systems
- Ability to integrate with payment cards, bank accounts, POS, Visa QR, Apple Pay, etc.
- A robust data dashboard that facilitates audits, reconciliation, and detailed accounting reporting
- Zero integration and maintenance fees
- High transaction success rates
- Automated chargeback alerts
- Round-the-clock customer support to resolve issues at once
- A Pay for Me feature that allows customers to ask their friends to pay for their purchases by sharing a link
- Discount Codes feature, which helps to drive sales by giving special offers and discounts to loyal customers
Partnerships
Paystack has partnerships with the following organizations and services toward improving its payment processing services.
- Shopify (2016) – The partnership birth a payments solution that supported more African businesses to build their online business and market their products on the platform
- Apple Pay (2021) – Pay with Apple Pay feature
- Xero (2022) – The partnership allowed Xero users to have a Pay with Paystack button in their invoices.
Which Country Owns Paystack?
Paystack is still a Nigerian fintech company, even though it has been acquired by Stripe, an Irish-American company. Despite Stripe operating two headquarters in the United States and Ireland, it didn’t move Paystack’s head office from Nigeria.
Read Next: Learn More About Peter Obi on ProfileDuck.
Leave a Comment