Payment processing giant Stripe has acquired Nigerian startup Paystack in a $200 million plus deal, making it the biggest startup acquisition in Nigeria as well Stripes biggest acquisition to date.
Stripe seeks to expand into the African Market in its bigger strategy announced earlier this year to expand its API- based payment processing services to more regions.
Paystack, like Stripe offers online payment integration services using APIs to facilitate transactions. To date, Paystack has approximately 60,000 customers ranging from small businesses, fintechs to large corporations.
Valued at $36 billion, Stripe is actively expanding its global presence through acquiring smaller companies in different regions. In the last 2 years, stripe has expanded its operations to 17 countries. With this deal, Stripe is keen to strategically position itself to take advantage of the actively growing African market.
According to Stripe, the acquisition will rapidly accelerate online commerce across Africa. Africa’s online economy is growing rapidly, with ecommerce averaging 21% yearly growth.
Stripe has in the past years worked with Paystack notably taking part in the 2018 Series A Funding among other industry players in a move $8 million for Paystack.
This acquisition will provide resources for Paystack to develop more products and consolidate the fragmented African Payment Market. Paystack will however operate independently, grow its operations across Africa and integrate more international payment methods to the platform.
According to Matt Henderson, Stripe’s business lead in EMEA:
“In just five years, Paystack has done what many companies could not achieve in decades. Their tech-first approach, values, and ambition greatly align with our own.
This acquisition will give Paystack resources to develop new products, support more businesses and consolidate the hyper-fragmented African payments market.
We can’t wait to see what they will build next and how their growth can turbocharge the African tech ecosystem.”
Shola Akinlade, CEO and co-founder of Paystack, said:
“Paystack is a growth engine for modern businesses in Africa, and we couldn’t be more excited to join forces with Stripe, whose mission and values are so aligned with ours, to nurture transformative businesses on the continent.
We believe deeply that with the right tools, African creators, developers, and entrepreneurs can do incredible things. Leveraging Stripe’s resources and deep expertise, we’re excited to accelerate our geographic expansion and introduce more payment channels, more value-added services, and deeper integrations with global platforms.”
