In October 2020, Stripe agreed to buy Paystack, a Lagos startup that helped businesses take payments online, for $200 million, the largest acquisition of a Nigerian startup. At the time, Paystack had 60,000 customers. Stripe said the deal would fund new products and help pull Africa’s scattered payments market together and that Paystack would keep running on its own. Shola Akinlade, its chief executive, promised more countries, more payment channels and more services.
Six years after the acquisition, he has fulfilled that promise. In 2020, Paystack made money by taking a cut each time a business collected payment online, a model that needs scale. It charges 1.5% plus ₦100 per transaction, capped at ₦2,000, so a ₦10,000 order earns it ₦250, about 19 cents.
This model earns income only when money moves; unlike a bank that holds customers’ money, it can lend or invest it at a higher rate than it pays for it, and that income keeps coming for as long as the balances stay, with or without transactions. Brazil’s Nubank shows how well this works. It ended 2025 with $41.9 billion in deposits, paid 87% of the interbank rate to fund itself, and made $2.9 billion.
Worldwide, interest made up 46% of payments revenue in 2024, according to McKinsey. Six years on, the company Stripe bought has changed shape. It now owns a microfinance bank and a consumer app. Its path shows why African fintechs keep becoming banks and how hard the last step is.
Paystack first became bigger and more exposed Paystack spent Stripe’s backing on reach, now serving businesses in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, with approvals in Egypt and Rwanda, and it hired wherever the talent was, including an engineering hub in Dubai. With time, reach brought more volume and costs in