Financial solutions company, Paystack, has bagged a seed funding of $1.3 million from both international and homegrown investors. Founders Ezra Olubi and Shola Akinlade become headline news when their company became the first Nigerian startup to be accepted into the world-famous Y Combinator program, based in Silicon Valley.
Coming from solid technology backgrounds, both founders saw the need for a world class payment software to solve the issues associated with online payments. ‘The challenge was to solve the issue of online payments in Africa, somehow connecting the super-fragmented aspects of the sector. What we did was develop multi-channel payment options for merchants across the country, enabling them to accept payments from around the world, via credit card, debit card, and direct bank transfer on web and mobile’ Olubi told Forbes.
Next came the invitation to the Y-Combinator program, where they obtained initial $120,000 seed funding and further technical advice. The program also aided them in determining what was most important and focusing their funds and expertise on these.
Paystack offers seamless transfer of funds from customers to companies and sellers, such that payments are received within the hour. Already, top Nigerian companies like Hotels.ng, Jobberman and Payporte use Paystack for their payments solution while Paystack claims to have over 1,500 users despite just coming out of beta stage.
