Paystack, a Nigeria-based startup that helps businesses in Africa get paid by anyone worldwide, announced this week that they raised $8 million in a Series A round led by Visa, Y Combinator, and Tencent.
Another funder for the Lagos based startup is Stripe, which is interesting because both companies share similarities. Tech Crunch’s Ingrid Lunden explained why this might be.
“I describe Paystack as “Stripe-like”, and in an interesting twist, the round is being led by none other than Stripe itself — a mark not just of how the latter (once a YC startup itself) is eyeing up like-minded global founders and businesses as it continues to grow, but also how Stripe understands the challenges of breaking into a region like Africa, and therefore sees an opportunity to work with and support those who are.”
With this funding, the Paystack team plans to expand its engineering department and its reach across Africa.
Merchants who use Paystack are able to build online payment features for their shop with code. And the company currently processes almost 15% of all online payments in Nigeria, which is Africa’s biggest economy according to Finextra.
More than 17,000 businesses trust Paystack, and the brand offers advanced fraud protection (both automated and manual) to protect both businesses and customers from any fraudulent transactions.
Paystack offers help for global brands, entrepreneurs and large organizations alike, offering unique explanations on how they can help make growing businesses easier for each of these parties. Their services include collecting one-time and recurring payments, retrieving customer and transaction data, making instant transfers and even verifying customer identities through the various APIs that Paystack has developed.
Paystack was founded in 2015 by Ezra Olubi and Shola Akinlade.
