After co-founding Precurio, an open-source collaboration software for businesses in emerging markets, Shola Akinlade, Paystack’s cofounder and CEO, set out to build a fintech solution that would reduce the friction of online payments in Nigeria and enable merchants to get paid quickly and easily.Together with the cofounder and CTO, Ezra Olubi, he focused on creating a platform that makesit easy for people to buy and sell on the internet, and once they had a prototype with 100 merchants who wanted this service, they applied to and joined Y Combinator - the largest technology incubator in the world.

“Paystack processes over 50% of all online payments in Nigeria. Our speed of integration, powerful and efficient APIs, detailed documentation, and world-class support are some of the reasons why people choose us,” says Chief Operating Officer, Amandine Lobelle. Paystack only makes money when their merchants make money; they charge a small percentage fee for each transaction. They also make their APIs available to developers to build amazing payment experiences for anything from transfers to user verification.

Paystack is headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria, and has a distributed team of about 250 working from different countries across the world. They’re committed to supporting African merchants with tools and insights to build and scale their businesses. In the past few years, they’ve launched in Ghana and South Africa and will be expanding to other markets across the continent including Kenya and Côte d'Ivoire.

Paystack was initially bootstrapped. It was accepted into the Y Combinator accelerator in 2015 and raised a $1.3 million seed round from Tencent, Comcast Ventures and Singularity Investments, with participation from other funds and angels, in 2016. In 2018, it raised an $8 million Series A round led by Stripe. In total, it’s raised $10 million.