Nigerian fintech startup Paystack has been acquired by global fintech giant Stripe for a reported $200 million, making it the biggest M&A deal in Nigerian tech and one of the biggest in Nigerian corporate history.
Paystack has been on Stripe’s radar since 2018 when Stripe led Paystack’s Series. A financing round and have been playing an advisory role since then.
According to Paystack Co-founder. Akinlade also disclosed PayStack investors, VISA, and Tencent even approached to acquire the company.
From the seller’s perspective
Paystack already processes more than half of all online transactions in Nigeria. Little wonder why Co-founder Sola Akinlade said the company was not up for sale when Stripe initially proposed an acquisition; however, stripe’s holds the vision and resources to accelerate the mission of the Paystack founders.
From the buyers perspective
Patrick Collison, CEO of Stripe, admitted that the deal with PayStack is an enormous opportunity, as African e-commerce grows by 30% every year, which would give Stripe an early footing in the region.
Collison established that PayStack founders would have organic input in running of the newly acquired startup’s operations.
What does this mean for Paystack as we know it?
While strategic details such as equity sharing and group structure have not been rolled out this the term acquisition has been used, meaning it is not a merger, so we could expect a change in name and brand Outlook as it is.
Nonetheless, Stripe management acknowledged that Paystack has laid a solid foundation for the company among other comments, we should expect that Stripe will still involve Paystack founders in the decision-making process.
