Lagos and San Francisco-based payment platform, Paystack, has launched a payment solution for Shopify merchants, opening up the e-commerce market for tens of thousands of Nigerian online retailers.
Paystack, the African fintech startup, and Y Combinator alumnus will be substantial as Shopify looks to connect more online merchants with customers across Africa, one of the world’s fastest growing emerging markets.
Shopify is a global leader in commerce and provides software tools for online retailers including storefronts, payment processing, and checkout apps. Moving into the Nigerian market, Africa’s most populous country and biggest economy, the e-commerce giant required a payment gateway capable of onboarding Nigerian merchants instantly, allowing merchants to receive payments from customers using local and international payment methods.
Nigeria’s online payments world is notoriously fragmented. Paystack is the go-to, indispensable layer connecting merchants to payment options, and is completely platform agnostic. Shoppers can use virtually any payment method, including Mastercard, Visa, Verve or direct pay from their bank accounts. The Paystack engineering team built an integration for Shopify merchants tailored for Nigeria’s mobile-first economy. Nigerian merchants will now be able to accept all payment methods from anyone, anywhere in the world.
Ezra Olubi, Paystack Co-founder, and CTO says: “Working with Shopify to enable them to navigate the splintered world that is Nigerian fintech, and online payments have been a brilliant experience for the Paystack team. 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.
“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”.
“We’re thrilled with the opportunity in Nigeria, and Paystack’s launch will further allow merchants in the area to benefit from Shopify,” said Joel Bronkowski, Strategic Partnerships, EMEA at Shopify.
“Shopify’s partner program aims to create opportunities for developers, designers, and consultants looking to help local businesses sell online. Along with recently signing our first experts in Nigeria, Ringier and CK Digital. We’re excited to partner with the next wave of African businesses to grow the e-commerce landscape in this region.”
Nigerian companies collected over USD$150B last year, most of which was done offline. However, the digital economy on the continent is growing fast, and Nigeria alone currently sees 6 million new Internet users annually. As mobile adoption continues at a torrid pace, with 400 million more smartphone connections by 2020 expected, the continent will need a reliable payments platform to support growth in online transactions.
