Nigeria’s financial tech startup, Paystack has been acquired by Stripe, a US fintech company like Paystack, which provides a quick way to integrate payments services into an online or offline transaction by way of an API.
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Paystack is a technology company based in Lagos and serves more than 60,000 businesses in Nigeria and Ghana including small businesses, larger corporates, fintechs, educational institutions, and online betting companies, to securely collect payments from around the world.
The exact amount and terms of the deal have not been disclosed but sources close to the deal claim that it is over $200M. That makes this the biggest startup acquisition to date to come out of Nigeria, as well as Stripe’s biggest acquisition to date anywhere. According to reports, Paystack will still continue to operate independently.
Shola Akinlade, CEO and co-founder of Paystack revealed that they had no intention of selling the company when Stripe first approached them.
He said, “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.”
The deal underscores how Stripe is putting a bet on the emerging markets of Africa specifically in the future of its own growth. For Paystack, the deal will give the company a lot more fuel to build out further in Nigeria and expand to other markets, CEO Shola Akinlade said in an interview.
“There is an enormous opportunity. In absolute numbers, Africa may be smaller right now than other regions, but online commerce will grow by 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″, Stripe’s co-founder and CEO, Patrick Collison said in an interview.
Stripe has added 17 more countries to its platform in the last 18 months. Its latest investment is in universal checkout service Fast and backing the Philippines-based payment platform PayMongo. Stripe is now currently valued at $36 billion and regularly tipped as an IPO candidate.