Paystack Launches Holding Company The Stack Group

By Adedapo Adesanya

Top payment solutions company, Paystack, has launched a holding company, known as The Stack Group (TSG), in its bid to aggregate the tech-focused family of brands connected with the Paystack brand.

TSG founding shareholders include Stripe, Shola Akinlade (Founder and CEO of Paystack), and existing Paystack employees. The agreements establishing TSG as the parent holding company were signed in October 2025, and are subject to the requisite regulatory approvals.

The announcement comes as Paystack celebrates its 10-year anniversary in January 2026.

Since its acquisition by Stripe in 2020, Paystack has grown its payment volume by 12x and is licensed and operational in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, with regulatory approvals for Egypt and Rwanda, representing 46 per cent of Africa’s GDP, the company said in a press statement.

The statement added that this product-first approach to pan-African growth has led to Paystack becoming profitable at the group level.

The development follows the recent launch of Paystack MFB in Nigeria after it acquired Ladder Microfinance Bank in its push into consumer products.

The company noted that as a standalone bank, Paystack MFB allows the group to internalise core financial rails and provide the banking and credit infrastructure required by over 300,000 Nigerian merchants.

“These capabilities enable the development of elegant, compliant, and much-needed end-to-end money-movement solutions and will continue to power the company’s mission of building technology solutions for Africa, to power African ambition,” parts of the statement added.

TSG will provide a corporate umbrella for a family of complementary brands that are solving Africa-specific challenges, while remaining operationally independent. At the outset, TSG will include merchant payments solution, Paystack, its controversial consumer payments product, Zap, the recently launched Paystack Microfinance Bank and TSG Labs, which will serve as hub for  emerging technologies and building new products both within and beyond financial technology.

According to Mr Akinlade, “The launch of TSG signals a larger scope of ambition for us and sets the tone for the next decade of our company. Having worked with thousands of companies across the continent since 2016, it is clear that there are significant opportunities to support businesses beyond payments, and TSG enables us to address the challenges African companies face.”

“Thank you to the Stripe team for their continued belief in Africa’s potential, and our ability to create transformative technology companies for the continent, and beyond,” he added.