Nigerian Fintech start-up, Paystack has announced that it is officially expanding its services to South Africa.
This official announcement is coming after the start-up has completed a six-month pilot program in the South African country.
With this launch, Paystack is counting its third expansion into some of Africa’s biggest markets.
Prior to the South African expansion, the company has made an expansion from its pioneer country, Nigeria to Ghana.
Paystack, which was founded in 2015 by Shola Akinlade, who also doubles as the CEO, and Ezra Olubi, CTO, uses its API to help businesses process payments.
Within six years since Paystack launched in Nigeria, the fintech start-up has expanded into more than 40 countries and grown its merchant customer base to over 60,000 companies.
Paystack’s rapid growth, which now accounts for more than half of all online transactions in Nigeria, caught the attention of American technology company, Stripe Inc.
Stripe Inc. acquired Paystack in October 2020 in a deal reported to be worth more than $200 million. The move to expand to South Africa, started about a month after the acquisition by the Silicon Valley company, Stripe.
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In 2018, Paystack raised $8 million in its series A funding. The round was led by Stripe, and the funding was used for its Ghana expansion.
CEO, Shola Akinlade, when commenting on the expansion, stated that:
“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.”
Head of product expansion, Khadijah Abu, added that:
“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.”