Stripe Acquires Nigeria’s Paystack

American financial services giant Stripe has acquired Nigerian fintech startup Paystack to expand into the fast-growing online market in Africa, the companies said on Thursday.

The acquisition, reportedly worth $200 million, further deepens the growing interests of fintech giants in the ever-expanding online commerce sector of Nigeria and Africa at large.

”In order to help increase Africa’s online GDP, Stripe has entered into an agreement to acquire Paystack, a technology company based in Lagos that makes it easy for organizations of all sizes to collect payments from around the world,” a statement on Stripe’s website read.

“In just five years, Paystack has done what many companies could not achieve in decades. Their tech-first approach, values, and ambition greatly align with our own.”

Stripe’s business lead in EMEA, Matt Henderson further added that “This acquisition will give Paystack resources to develop new products, support more businesses, and consolidate the hyper-fragmented African payments market.”

Paystack was founded in 2015 and has more than 60,000 businesses in Nigeria and Ghana using it to securely collect online and offline payments, launch new business models and deepen customer relationships.

”Paystack today is 114 friends of 12 nationalities, currently working remotely across 9 countries,” Shola Akinlade, Paystack co-founder, and CEO assured customers.

“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.”

Stripe is reportedly valued at $36 billion, according to investor website PitchBook.