In the midst of a tough week in Nigeria, we have some positive news to share.
Paystack will be acquired by @stripe to accelerate online and offline commerce across Africa.https://t.co/7ZAA8vhdIz pic.twitter.com/kShKF5evBK
— Paystack (@paystack) October 15, 2020
In what has been described as a monumental African acquisition, PayStack, a Nigerian payment processing firm, has been acquired by Stripe, a San-Franscisco based online payment processing firm.
According to TechCrunch, the terms of the deal stand at over $200 million, making this the biggest startup acquisition to date in Nigeria, and the biggest for Stripe.
PayStack is one of the most recognized payment processing startups on the African continent. Stripe acquired the startup in order to accelerate online commerce on the continent and enable more global companies to enter this fast-growing market.
Here are some milestones by the startup:
- Powers over 15% of all web payments in Nigeria
- Powers over 60, 000 organizations that includes corporates, fintechs, education institutions, and small businesses
Some of its clients include:
PayStack is an innovative startup that enables anyone to quickly set up an account and start accepting payments in under 30 minutes.
Signup to attend: https://bit.ly/BitKECatapult-28
Stripe is particularly interested in emerging markets like Africa due to their growth potential.
“There is 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.” ~ Patrick Collison, CEO & Co-Founder, Stripe
According to Shola Akinlade, CEO, PayStack:
“Paystack was not for sale when Stripe approached us. 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.” ~ CEO, PayStack
According to Collison, CEO, Stripe, PayStack seems to have figured out certain payment aspects better than Stripe, which put them on their acquisition radar.
“A lot of companies have been, let’s say, heavily influenced by Stripe. But with Paystack, clearly they’ve put a lot of original thinking into how to do things better.
There are some details of Stripe that we consider mistakes, but we can see that Paystack ‘gets it,’ it’s clear from the site and from the product sensibilities, and that has nothing to do with them being in Africa or African.”
Paystack has recently been partnering with crypto exchanges and blockchain firms, acting as a payment gateway, in order to process transactions.
Some of these include:
- NaijaCrypto
- TerraBit
- Luno
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