The Ledger
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Payment fundamentals are identical across Africa, only local context varies
“We've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and these things work the same way in these markets. You know, the part that just changes is the local context.”
Paystack was the only Nigerian payments company with automated disputes
“So we started building where the first company, I think was still the only company that has like An automated dispute process and all that.”
Paystack brought on Stripe and Visa for cross-border scaling expertise
“That's one of the reasons why just thinking about that series A, we had to think about companies that have figured out skill. Companies like Stripe, companies like Visa. Like if there's a company, the companies that have thought about moving payments from one …”
Engineering challenges require seasoned mentors who have seen problems firsthand
“Because I know with engineering, some things you just have to have seen the problems before. You can't really anticipate some things, you know, so just having someone having a 10 X engineer, just sit with a team of five engineers. I think it helps everybody.”
Paystack let unregistered businesses accept up to $3,000 via Nigeria's BVN
“We can just get your BVN and we get your details.
We can verify that.
Okay.
We can allow you accept payments.
For, I think, up to about 3000 dollars, and then after that you have to like register the business.”
Paystack processed only $200 during the month of their YC interview
“On the interview day, I actually remember they asked us how much had we processed that month. I said, 200 dollars.”
Paystack bypassed cards to support direct bank and USSD payments
“Very quickly, we moved past paying with cards, because not everybody wants to pay with a card, so we allow people to pay directly with your bank accounts.
We allow people to pay with USSD.”
Paystack hit $20 million in monthly volume three years after YC
“Now last month we did over twenty million dollars. That's just three years, you know.”
Paystack was the first Nigerian startup admitted to Y Combinator
“We became the first Nigerian company to get into YC.”
Legacy Nigerian payment infrastructure was built for enterprises favoring complexity
“I think before now, A lot of the payments infrastructure was built for enterprise companies. And of course, enterprise companies like complexity.”
Paystack raised a Series A round from Stripe and Visa
“We just raised a Series A million dollars from Stripe and Visa.”
Paystack reduced Nigerian online checkout flows from seven steps to two
“It's a payments company, we've made a huge leap over what currently exists. It used to be about seven steps before, it's now two steps”