Nigerian fintech startup Paystack, backed by Y-Combinator, has closed on US$1.3-million in Seed Funding.
“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, ecommerce, travel & hospitality, financial services or entertainment,” said CEO of Paystack, Shola Akinlade in a press release to Ventureburn.
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Paystack aims to utilise their new-found investment to scale themselves successfully
The seed investment comes from various investors, some of which include:
- Tencent
- Comcast Ventures
- Singularity investments
- Spark
- M&S Partners
- Tokyo Funders Fund
- Blue Rinc Capital
- Pave Investments
- KIBS-CFY Partners
- Michael Siebel
- Justin Kan
- Olumide Soyombo
- Leonard Stiegeler
“We look forward to supporting this talented team as they streamline the payment process between merchants and consumers,” mentioned associate at Comcast Ventures, Christian Ebersol.
Paystack is an online payments platform which offers users a seamless multi-channel payment option with merchants across Nigeria. This allows them to accept payments from all over the globe via their credit cards, debit cards, direct transfers as well as via web and mobile services.
The company is founded by Shola Akinlade as well as Ezra Olubi, their aim now is to utilise the investment to build their engineering team in Lagos. The team will also use this investment to help accelerate their product development as well as increase their capacity to bring on new customers.
“We know Africa’s digital economy has potential, many billions of dollars of potential, we simply need to unlock it and make businesses work better, faster and more effectively. Paystack will do this. Thanks to the backing from our investors with today’s announcement, and our time spent with Y Combinator, we are now in the strongest position yet to resolve the disconnect between African businesses and accepting payments,” said Akinlade.
