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Shola Akinlade has spent a decade building Paystack into a critical piece of Nigeria’s digital economy, quietly shaping how money moves between businesses and customers. Now, the Nigerian software engineer is steering the Stripe-owned company into a new phase that places small businesses at the center of its ambitions.
With the acquisition of Ladder Microfinance Bank, rebranded as Paystack Microfinance Bank, Akinlade is positioning Paystack to help narrow Nigeria’s estimated $32 billion financing gap for small and medium-sized businesses that struggle to secure credit from traditional lenders.
The move, announced last week, marks a clear shift for the company Akinlade co-founded in 2015 with Ezra Olubi. What began as a payments gateway is now extending into deposit-taking and lending, expanding Paystack’s role from facilitating transactions to offering financial tools that small businesses need to stay afloat and grow.
The newly acquired bank will operate as a sister company to Paystack’s payments business, each with separate licenses and governance structures, under their parent company, Stripe.
Paystack MFB expands data-driven banking
For years, Paystack has processed trillions of naira every month for about 300,000 Nigerian businesses. That scale has given the firm a detailed view of how merchants earn, spend and manage cash. With Paystack MFB, Akinlade is seeking to turn that data into practical support.
The bank plans to offer working capital loans, merchant cash advances and overdrafts, using transaction histories from Paystack’s gateway to shorten approval times compared with those of commercial banks. For many small businesses, speed can be as important as price when cash runs thin. The banking license also adds a new layer to Paystack’s product stack.
Beyond lending, MFB is expected to support consumer-facing services and enable startups to embed digital accounts and savings into their products through application programming interfaces, without holding separate banking licenses. The latest move mirrors the approach that made Paystack a household name among developers and founders a decade ago, when it simplified online payments for Nigerian businesses.
Paystack broadens services without full banking
Founded in 2015, Paystack quickly emerged as one of Africa’s standout technology firms, becoming one of Y Combinator’s earliest African-backed companies. Its profile rose further in 2020, when Stripe acquired the company for $200 million.
Since then, Paystack has continued to expand carefully, with attention to governance and staff safety as its customer base and regulatory footprint have grown. The launch of Zap, its consumer payments app, signaled a push into consumer products. Securing a microfinance banking license takes that push further, while stopping short of the cost and scrutiny that come with a full commercial banking charter.
The structure allows Paystack to test lending and deposit products while limiting regulatory exposure. Paystack Microfinance Bank and Paystack Payments will collaborate within existing rules, but each will maintain its own scope, products and responsibilities. For Akinlade, that balance reflects an approach to growth, one that prioritizes stability as much as expansion.
Akinlade builds finance, football institutions
Outside fintech, Akinlade has also widened his interests into sports, bringing the same long-term focus to football. In March 2023, he acquired a 55 percent stake in Aarhus Fremad, a Danish second-division club, becoming its majority owner.
This followed the founding of Sporting Lagos Football Club in Nigeria, a private club set up to develop young talent in the country’s commercial capital. Sporting Lagos now competes in the Nigeria National League, the second division, after relegation from the 2023–24 Nigeria Premier League.
These ventures sit alongside, rather than apart from, Akinlade’s work at Paystack. Together, they point to an executive who is methodical about building institutions, whether in finance or sport. With Paystack Microfinance Bank, his immediate focus remains on a familiar challenge: giving small businesses better access to money. In a country where financing gaps often decide whether a company survives or stalls, that goal carries weight far beyond Paystack’s expansion.
