NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, December 22, 2016

Nigerian fintech startup Paystack, announced today that it has closed in on $1.3 million in seed investment.

Co-founded by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi, the funds will go to building out its engineering team in Lagos, Nigeria; grow sales and marketing operations; and accelerate product development and customer on boarding, according to the company’s press release.

Paystack offers a centralized way for African online merchants to accept online payments from a variety of methods—a process that has been somewhat fragmented across the African continent.

“Having painstakingly identified the many barriers that merchants on the continent have when it comes to online payments, we have built and refined a product for Africa that we hope will act as a catalyst for the continent’s online economy, be it on-demand services, e-commerce, travel and  hospitality, financial services, or entertainment,” says Akinlade in a released statement.