10 years of Paystack, and the beginning of The Stack Group

Ten years ago, Paystack set out with a simple goal: to help businesses in Africa get paid.

Today, we serve ambitious teams in Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, with regulatory approvals for Egypt and Rwanda, representing 46% of Africa’s GDP. We were acquired by global payments giant Stripe in 2020, and since then, our total payment volume has grown over twelve times. As we celebrate our 10th anniversary, we’re thrilled to share that Paystack has achieved group level profitability.

This is a rare and important milestone for companies that operate at our scale; the result of the hard work of hundreds of current and former Stacks, and the hundreds of thousands of customers who inspire us.

As we defined our ambitions for our second decade, we thought deeply about how to create more value for the 300,000+ businesses and millions of customers we serve.

This is why, today, we're announcing the creation of a new parent company, The Stack Group (TSG).

TSG's mission is to power African ambition. We'll do this by nurturing a family of brands who will innovate within different domains.

• Paystack innovates within merchant payments
• Zap innovates within consumer payments
• Paystack Microfinance Bank innovates within banking
• TSG Labs innovates with emerging technologies, and builds new products both within and beyond financial technology

This larger scope of ambitions comes with a new ownership structure, pending regulatory approvals. TSG will have 3 founding shareholders: Stripe, myself (Shola Akinlade) and Paystack employees. I’ll continue to lead the Group and I’m personally investing in the business to demonstrate my long-term commitment.

I’m deeply thankful to the Stripe team for their continued belief in Africa’s potential, and our ability to create transformative technology companies for the continent, and beyond. There is so much yet to build, and I’m excited to continue to realise this vision for another decade.

Our next decade

Three major themes influenced our thinking about our next 10 years.

1. The accelerating pace of technology creates new opportunities: From stablecoins to artificial intelligence, technology has accelerated at a dizzying pace, offering new ways to solve seemingly impossible problems.
2. We've acquired critical licenses that give us new superpowers: We've acquired a microfinance bank license in Nigeria, and are finalizing a stablecoin license in a key market, pending regulatory approvals. Paired with our group profitability, we're better positioned than ever before to provide elegant, compliant, end-to-end money movement solutions.
3. There are huge opportunities to support businesses, beyond payments: While payments is a critical problem for our merchants, it's far from the only one. As they navigate more complex business landscapes, we see major opportunities to leverage breakthrough emerging technology to solve problems beyond payments.

Africa is on the cusp of a generational shift. We believe that there remains immense untapped potential across industries, and that technology is a critical lever.

We're restructuring into The Stack Group to help accelerate that shift.

Thank you, as always, to the thousands of businesses and teams who inspire us everyday. As we embark on a new decade, we look forward to powering your ambitions, at every scale.