Overview: Today, we’re going to talk about Paystack - the African payments infrastructure company that was acquired by Stripe in 2020 October. We’ll give some context of the Nigerian payments sector before 2015, Paystack's founding, early history, acquisition by Stripe & end with our views on its future outlook. This episode was recorded on January 10th, 2021.

Companies discussed: Paystack, Stripe, Flutterwave, Interswitch & Y Combinator (YC)

Business concepts discussed: Payments infrastructure strategy, low-end disruption, product-market fit (PMF), capital fundraising (Angels, Strategic investors, VCs), Corporate venture capital (CVC) strategy, payments infrastructure & payments M&A strategy

Conversation highlights:

(01:00) - Why we’re talking about Paystack
(03:12) - Payments landscape before Paystack
(06:15) - Founders’ background - Ezra Olubi and Shola Akinlade
(17:00) - Paystack products and services
(22:46) - Paystack fundraising - Y Combinator, Angels, Seed & Series A
(31:18) - Broader payment ecosystem in Nigeria, transaction volumes, etc
(43:30) - Stripe’s acquisition of Paystack in 2020 October
(52:10) - Bankole’s overall thoughts and future outlook
(58:17) - Olumide’s overall thoughts and future outlook
(1:14:02) - Recommendations, small wins and open questions

Olumide’s recommendations, small wins & open questions:

Bankole’s recommendations, small wins & open questions:

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