Hi everyone - Shola here (Paystack co-founder and CEO) with an important community update.
I'm thankful to share that Paystack is joining the Stripe family. We’ll be acquired by Stripe to accelerate online commerce across Africa, pending standard closing conditions including regulatory approvals.
About Paystack
Paystack is a technology company powering growth for businesses in Africa through our collection of secure payment tools.
Over 60,000 businesses of all sizes use our suite of Collections, Disbursements, Identity Verification, Reporting, and Commerce tools to grow their business across the continent, including FedEx, UPS, MTN, the Lagos Internal Revenue Service, and AXA Mansard. Merchants already use our technology to process hundreds of millions of dollars each month, and joining forces with Stripe will supercharge our ability to serve our community of makers and help more businesses across the continent.
We're PCI DSS Level 1 Certified, the most stringent level of certification in the global payments industry, enabling companies to transact across Africa safely and securely.
We're doubling down on Paystack's mission
Paystack will continue to operate independently, and there will be no disruption of service as a result of this acquisition. If you’re using Paystack today, there’s no need to change anything about your technical integrations.
Paystack merchants and partners can look forward to more payment channels, more tools, accelerated geographic expansion, and deeper integrations with global platforms. We will continue to execute against an ambitious roadmap with the support of Stripe's resources and deep expertise.
About Stripe
Stripe is a technology company that builds economic infrastructure for the internet. Companies of all sizes - including Amazon, Google, Shopify, and Zoom - use Stripe's software to accept payments and scale their online businesses. Each year, more than 80% of American adults complete a purchase using Stripe.
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.
We also share a strong cultural DNA. We value voracious curiosity and transparency, we're inspired by hard challenges, and we're profoundly optimistic about the future.
As we continued to work with and learn from each other, we realized that we could accomplish a lot more, faster, by joining forces. Stripe's mission is to increase the GDP of the internet, and Paystack will spearhead this effort in Africa.
What happens next
Paystack today is 114 friends of 12 nationalities, currently working remotely across 9 countries. What happens next is that we go right back to work, because there is so much that we can fix and improve in Africa’s financial infrastructure.
There is a lot more we want to share about Paystack’s journey to this point, but this isn't the time for it. We don't want to draw attention away from the very serious conversations happening at all levels about police violence in Nigeria, especially against young makers. As a maker myself, and member of the tech community (a frequent target of the attacks) this matters deeply to me and to everyone at Paystack.
In mid-July last year, we hosted a joint meetup with Stripe where several entrepreneurs came together to share with each other what they were working on. It was a powerful reminder of the potential and the promise of our community.
These makers deserve an enabling environment that allows them to dare more, and build beautiful, useful things with friends, safe in the knowledge that they will be able to enjoy the fruit of their labour.
They, and millions of other African creators like them, deserve more.
In the near future, we will share a lot more behind-the-scenes details about our journey. Until then, I would like to thank the entire Paystack team, investors, and above all, our merchants, for your support and belief in us over the last five years.
In partnership with Stripe, we're excited to continue to help build a new generation of transformative businesses across Africa.
Lots more - much more - soon.
Onwards.
Source: https://paystack.com/blog/company-news/paystack-joining-stripe