Paystack has launched in South Africa seven months after being acquired by Stripe for over $200 million. Before debuting in South Africa, it ran a six-month pilot working with developers and business owners.
During the pilot, Paystack helped hundreds of businesses — tech startups, ecommerce stores, agencies, and creators — get paid online, and built its team in South Africa.
Founded by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi in January 2016, Paystack is a payment gateway that allows businesses across Africa receive payment. It currently helps process over 60,000 online and offline payments from anyone, anywhere in the world.
Commenting on the expansion, Paystack CEO, Shola Akinlade said: “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.”
“The opportunity for innovation in the South African payment space is far from saturated. Today, for instance, digital payments make up less than half of all transactions in the country,” Abdulrahman Jogbojogbo, product marketer at Paystack said. “So, the presence of competition is not only welcome; it’s encouraged. The more innovative plays there are, the faster it’ll be to realize our goal of having an integrated African market.”
Khadijah Abu, head of product expansion, 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.”
