Stripe acquires Nigeria’s Paystack for $200M+ to expand into the African continent .www.fund.i.ng

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Paystack has been acquired by Stripe in a deal rumoured to be
around $200m

Nigerian payments startup, Paystack has been acquired by
US-based payments giant, Stripe.

According to a source, this deal is rumoured to be around $200
million.

For many in the Nigerian tech ecosystem, it was just a matter of
time before this happened.

Here’s why.

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Founded in 2015 by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi, Paystack
sought to solve the challenge of online payment transactions in
Nigeria.

By seamlessly connecting all multi-channel payment options with
merchants across the country, it enabled them to accept payments
from around the world, via credit card, debit card, and direct bank
transfer on web and mobile.

This got the one-year-old startup into US-based seed-stage
accelerator, Y Combinator where it received $120k in funding and
access to global investors.

Later that year, it raised a seed funding of $1.3 million from
Tencent, Comcast Ventures, Singularity Investments, Michael Seibel,
Justin Kan, Jason Njoku’s SPARK.ng, Olumide Soyombo among other
investors.

But it was in 2018 Paystack put everyone on notice as it raised
$8 million in Series A funding. With participation from global
payments company, Visa, US-based accelerator, Y Combinator, and
Tencent, it was Stripe, a similar payments company based in the US,
who led the round.

Three years after launching, this brought the company’s total
funding to a little over $10 million. And since then, the company
hasn’t raised a follow-up round.

So far, Paystack now has more than 60,000 businesses using its
platform and is looking to expand beyond Nigeria and Ghana where it
currently operates.

Stripe, on the other hand, raised $600 million at a $36b
valuation earlier this year in April. And according to the
founders, the company was looking to continue investing in product
development, further global expansion and strategic
initiatives.

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The billion-dollar startup has been strategically investing in
similar startups around the world. Having invested in Paystack
(Africa) two years ago, it recently invested in Paymongo, a
payments startup in the Philippines (Asia) last month.

For its global expansion into Africa, Paystack presented the
perfect acquisition opportunity. But while this is the biggest
acquisition deal to come out of sub-Saharan Africa and Stripe’s
largest acquisition till date, both companies will continue to
operate independently according to our source