Nigerian businesses selling goods and services through Shopify–a leading e-commerce platform–now have an easier way to handle online transactions thanks to Paystack, a financial technology startup based in both San Francisco and Lagos, Nigeria.
Paystack offers a centralized way for African online merchants to accept online payments from a variety of methods–a process that has been somewhat fragmented across the African continent.
Nigeria’s Business Boom
With the solution, Paystack allows online retailers to offer customers virtually any payment option including paying by MasterCard, Visa, Verve, or directly from a banking account. Online Nigerian businesses can accept payments from anyone in the world.
Nigeria is currently undergoing a business boom. The country collected $150 billion in business revenues last year, although those transactions were mostly in shops and in physical business establishments.
With Paystack, Nigerian businesses are poised to add a significant amount of revenue through online transactions to its economy. Nigeria has a rapidly growing digital mobile economy. Online shopping and payments are expected to increase with 400 million more smartphone connections in Nigeria by 2020.
Navigating Nigeria’s “Splintered” E-Commerce World
Paystack’s co-founder and CEO, Ezra Olubi, said in a released statement that working with Shopify enables his company to “navigate the splintered world that is Nigerian fintech and online payments.â€
“We’ve long admired Shopify as an online merchant giant–their unique offering, global reach, product range and their ability to power a whole generation of online sellers is remarkable,†says Olubi.
Shopify also issued a statement indicating its excitement about the joint effort between the two companies.
“Paystack’s mission is to transform and overhaul the interaction between business and consumers and to build a payments product for Africa to act as a catalyst for the continent’s online economy. Like us, Shopify sees massive growth opportunities in Nigeria and the rest of Africa when it comes to online commerce, and the first step for unlocking the continent’s potential is to develop a safe, reliable payments infrastructure that is trusted by both merchants and customers. This launch is an exciting first step for the market.â€