“Can Africa's leading payments API become the operating system for African business banking?”
Paystack started as Africa's answer to Stripe — clean APIs for online card acceptance for Nigerian businesses. After Stripe's 2020 acquisition it became Stripe's African beachhead and expanded across five+ markets. The 2026 acquisition of Ladder Microfinance Bank is the company's most material pivot: it moves Paystack from pure payments infrastructure into deposit-taking, lending, and banking-as-a-service, mirroring how Moniepoint and OPay used MFB licences to become full-stack financial platforms.