Thanks to digital innovation, the business landscape has evolved dramatically over the years. Offline businesses are now tapping into the potential of digital to leverage their technologies, in order to create value and new services.
Fintech plays an integral part in this massive shift in the industry. Numerous fintech startups are solving problems that financial services and banks faced in the past. Based out of Ikeja, Nigeria, Paystack is solving the payments problem by making it easy for organisations of all sizes to collect payments from around the world.
Biggest startup acquisition of Nigeria
Recently, the fintech giant Stripe has entered into an agreement to acquire Paystack. Although the terms of the deal have not been disclosed, TechCrunch reports that the deal is worth over $200M (€170.1M); making it the biggest startup acquisition to have occurred in Nigeria. This is, reportedly, also Stripe’s biggest acquisition to date anywhere.
It’s worth mentioning that earlier this year, Stripe secured $600M (approx €553 million) in a Series-G round. This funding helped the unicorn expand its API-based payments services into more places,
As per the company claims, The African internet economy is growing quickly, with online commerce in the region growing 21% year-over-year, 75% faster than the global average.
“This acquisition is the culmination of a close partnership between Stripe and Paystack over the last several years. Both companies are alums of the Y Combinator accelerator program, and Stripe led our Series A round of funding in 2018,” Shola Akinlade, CEO and cofounder of Paystack mentions in a blogpost.
Will continue to operate independently
To date, more than 60,000 businesses in Nigeria and Ghana use Paystack to securely collect online and offline payments, launch new business models and deepen customer relationships. Notably, Paystack processes more than half of all online transactions in Nigeria.
According to Paystack, it will continue to operate independently, growing its operations in Africa and adding more international payment methods. Furthermore, Paystack’s capabilities will be embedded in Stripe’s Global Payments and Treasury Network (GPTN), a programmable platform for global money movement that currently spans 42 countries.
Stripe valued at €33B
Founded by John Collison and Patrick Collison in 2010, Stripe develops software that allows businesses to accept payments online.
A couple of weeks back, the fintech startup Stripe announced a partnership with CRM software company Salesforce to help enterprise businesses to quickly bring new online products and services to market with best-in-class payments capabilities to support their customers and boost revenues.
Valued at €33B, Stripe has numerous high-profile customers including Zoom Video Communications, Caviar, Coupa, Just Eat, Keap, Lightspeed, Mattel, NBC, and Paid. The company has offices in Dublin, London, Paris, Singapore, and Tokyo.
Main image credits: Stripe
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