… Biggest Startup Acquisition to Ever Come Out of Nigeria
In a bid to expand its Application Programming Interface (API)-based payments services into more geographies, American Fintech giant, Stripe, has acquired Lagos-based startup, Paystack for $200 million dollars.
Created in 2015, Paystack provides a quick way to integrate payments services into an online or offline transaction by way of an API. It currently has around 60,000 customers, including small businesses, larger corporates, fintechs, educational institutions, and online betting companies.
Stripe announced that paystack would still be operating independently.
While the details of the deal’s terms haven’t been disclosed, sources close to it confirm that it’s over $200 million, setting a record as the biggest startup acquisition to ever come out of Nigeria.
The deal highlights Stripe’s extant strategy of doubling down on geographic expansion, as prior to the acquisition, it had added 17 more countries to its platform in the last 18 months.
“There is enormous opportunity,” said Patrick Collison, Stripe’s Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder. “In absolute numbers, Africa may be smaller right now than other regions, but online commerce will grow 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.”
For Paystack, the deal will give the company a lot more investment to build out further in Nigeria and expand to other markets, CEO Shola Akinlade said in an interview.
“Paystack was not for sale when Stripe approached us,” said Akinlade, who co-founded the company with Ezra Olubi (who is the CTO). “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.”
Collison, also, mentioned that: “A lot of companies have been, let’s say, heavily influenced by Stripe.
“But with Paystack, clearly they’ve put a lot of original thinking into how to do things better. There are some details of Stripe that we consider mistakes, but we can see that Paystack ‘gets it,’ it’s clear from the site and from the product sensibilities, and that has nothing to do with them being in Africa or African.”
