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After a six-month pilot program, Nigerian payments platform Paystack has launched operations in South Africa. This will be the tech startup’s third African market.
TechCrunch quoted Paystack CEO and Co-Founder Shola Akinlade as saying: “South Africa is one of the continent’s most important markets and our launch here is a significant milestone in our mission to accelerate commerce across Africa. We’re excited to continue building the financial infrastructure that empowers ambitious businesses in Africa, helps them scale, and connects them to global markets.”
During the pilot program, the startup worked closely with businesses to eliminate hurdles while growing its local team. The companies ranged from tech startups to corporations, e-commerce businesses, freelance developers and entrepreneurs.
According to Khadijah Abu, head of product expansion at Paystack: “For many businesses in South Africa, we know that accepting payments online can be cumbersome. Our pilot in South Africa was hyper-focused on removing barriers to entry, eliminating tedious paperwork, providing world-class API documentation to developers, and making it a lot simpler for businesses to accept payments online.”
In October 2020, Paystack sent shockwaves throughout the African tech ecosystem when it closed a deal worth over $200 million. Stripe, the global payment platform behemoth, acquired the company as part of its bid to further expansion in Africa, TechCrunch reported. In 2018, Stripe led Paystack’s Series A $8-million funding round.
Paystack
Paystack is a payments company that helps businesses in Africa get paid by anyone, anywhere, with a footprint in Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa. The startup was launched in 2016 by two young Nigerians, Akinlade and Ezra Olubi. It currently processes over 50 percent of all Web payments in Nigeria, powering payments for more than 60,000 organizations, including FedEx, UPS, MTN, Piggyvest and others.
