When Stripe bought Paystack in 2020 for about $200 million, the deal was read as a verdict on African fintech: a Lagos startup good enough to be acquired by the most valuable payments company in Silicon Valley. Six years later, Paystack looks less like a subsidiary and more like a group of its own. It holds a banking licence, plans to lend to the merchants it serves, and sits inside a new holding company called The Stack Group.
Looking at Paystack six years after Stripe shows how African payment companies are trying to earn more from each customer than a cut of each transaction.
From one company to The Stack Group
In January 2026, Paystack set up The Stack Group (TSG) as a holding company. Four businesses now sit under it:
- Paystack, the payments gateway most Nigerian developers know
- Zap, the consumer payments app launched in March 2025
- Paystack MFB, a licensed microfinance bank
- TSG Labs, which works on newer products, including stablecoins and AI
The ownership structure is unusual for an acquired company. According to reporting by Semafor in January 2026, TSG's shareholders are Stripe, 209 Paystack employees and co-founder Shola Akinlade. Stripe stays the largest owner, but staff and the founder now hold equity in the parent, not just options in a subsidiary. That gives the Lagos team more control over strategy than most acquired startups ever get.
The reorganisation came weeks after a leadership change. Co-founder Ezra Olubi left the company in November 2025 after being dismissed, which left Akinlade as the face of the business.
Why a bank licence matters
The most important move is the microfinance bank. Paystack bought Ladder Microfinance Bank and renamed it Paystack MFB. The bank holds its own licence, so Paystack can now hold deposits and extend credit under its own name, without renting a banking partner's balance sheet.
The first plan is business lending. Paystack processes payments for about 300,000 merchants, and it can see how much money each one takes in, how often and from whom. That transaction history is better credit data than most Nigerian banks have on small businesses. A merchant with steady card and transfer income for two years is a much easier loan decision when you can watch that income arrive in real time.
Banking-as-a-service is on the roadmap too. Other fintechs could use Paystack MFB's licence and infrastructure to offer accounts and payments to their own users. Nigerian players such as Moniepoint and Kuda have built large businesses on licensed banking, and Paystack is now positioned to compete on the same footing.
Zap and the regulator
The move into consumer products has not been smooth. Zap, launched in March 2025, lets people pay and send money with their bank accounts without a card. In April 2025, the Central Bank of Nigeria fined Paystack ₦250 million over issues linked to the product. The fine was a reminder that consumer money products in Nigeria face much closer supervision than merchant gateways do.
That episode helps explain the push for a dedicated bank. Running regulated products through a company with its own licence and compliance team is cleaner than running them through a payments processor.
Where Paystack operates now
Paystack is live in five markets: Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Côte d'Ivoire. It also has approvals in Egypt and Rwanda. In February 2025, the company said it had become profitable in every market where it operates. For a company that spent years funded by Stripe while it expanded, that milestone made the 2026 restructuring possible.
Competition
Paystack is no longer competing only with other gateways like Flutterwave. Its plans put it up against:
- Moniepoint, which grew from agent banking into business accounts and loans
- OPay and PalmPay, which dominate consumer mobile payments in Nigeria
- Kuda, a digital bank with a large retail base
- Flutterwave, its long-time rival for merchant and cross-border payments
Paystack's edge is its developer base and merchant data. Its weakness is consumer reach. Zap was meant to fix that, and the CBN fine showed how costly mistakes can be in that segment.
What it means for builders
For African developers and founders, three things stand out.
First, expect more products from the same Paystack dashboard. Merchants who already integrate Paystack for checkout are likely to see credit offers and account features appear there before anywhere else.
Second, if banking-as-a-service launches, startups that have struggled to find a licensed partner in Nigeria could get another option, with an API style many already know.
Third, the ownership model is worth watching. If an acquired African startup can rebuild itself with staff and founder equity at the parent level, other founders weighing an exit may push for similar terms.
Six years on, the Stripe deal looks less like an ending and more like the funding round that let Paystack become a bank. Whether lending turns out to be as reliable a business as payments will decide how the next six years go.
Follow more startup and funding news on Afrotech Horizon.
