Nigerian payment processing startup, Paystack has been granted a Payment Service Provider Authorisation from the Central Bank of Kenya, an authorisation which now permits it to provide payment services to businesses in Kenya.
With the authorisation, Paystack will now be able to offer settlement services to businesses operating in Kenya and this will enable such businesses to get settled in both Kenyan Shillings and USD and also accept payments via several local and global payment channels including M-Pesa, Card payments (Visa, Mastercard, American Express), and Apple Pay.
With this development, Kenya becomes Paystack’s fourth African country where it has a local operational base. Other countries are Nigeria, South Africa, and Ghana.
In line with this, the payment processor has also announced the launch of its Kenya Private Beta.
This development further expands the scope and reach of the payment service provider which was founded by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi in 2015. Shola and Ezra had met at Babcock University and worked in banking and IT before founding Paystack.
The payment processor was later acquired by Irish-American financial services company Stripe for $200M in 2020.
Paystack, often referred to as the Stripe of Africa, has around 60,000 customers, which includes small businesses, larger corporates, fintechs, educational institutions and online betting companies.
