Grace Ashiru
Paystack, a pan-African payments startup that Stripe bought for $200 million in October 2020, has been given a Payment Service Provider license by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) to start doing business in the East African country.
With this license, Paystack can help Kenyan businesses accept one-time and automated recurring card payments and collect payments from customers through M-Pesa, Card payments (Visa, Mastercard, American Express), and Apple Pay, among other local and global payment channels.
Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi started Paystack in 2015. It was the first Nigerian company accepted into the YCombinator startup accelerator. Later, the business grew to include Ghana in 2018 and South Africa in 2021.
Technology data shows that Paystack raised about $12 million in different funding rounds before it was bought for more than $200 million in October 2020. The company has kept running on its own, expanding its operations in Africa and adding more ways to pay internationally.
Paystack tries to build fast, safe, and reliable payment services for businesses and customers in every country where it does business says Caroline Muema, Paystack’s Business Operations and Expansion Lead in Kenya.
