Paystack

Paystack was founded in 2015 by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi to make it straightforward for Nigerian businesses to accept card payments online — a capability that was, in 2015, technically complex, commercially unreliable, and beyond the reach of most small business operators without significant technical resources. Its integration with Nigerian banks’ payment infrastructure, combined with a developer experience that prioritised clarity and simplicity, made it the default payment integration for the wave of Nigerian startups, e-commerce businesses, and digital service providers that emerged in the mid-2010s. Paystack was accepted into Y Combinator in 2016 and was acquired by Stripe in October 2020 for a reported $200 million — the largest acquisition of an African technology company at the time. Since the acquisition, it has expanded to Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda, and Côte d’Ivoire while maintaining its Nigeria operations as the core of its African business.