Paystack, a Nigerian payments startup, has announced an $8 million series A it raised from a couple of new and existing investors. This is according to reports by TechCrunch.
The funding has come from China's Tencent, Stripe (which Paystack is cloning), VISA as well as Y Combinator. Both Tencent and YC are some of the existing investors in the startup.
This investment brings Paystack's total investment raised to date to at least $10 million.
The initial investment into the startup totaled $120k in March 2016 which came from YC after it was accepted into the accelerator's early 2016 batch. This was followed by an undisclosed non-equity investment in mid-2016.
In December 2016, Paystack secured $1.3 million Seed round from a group of investors led by Comcast Ventures as well as Singularity Investments.
The other investors included Tencent Holdings, Spark, M&S Partners, Tokyo Founders Fund, Blue Rinc Capital, Pave Investments, KIBS-CFY Partners, Michael Siebel, Justin Kan, Olumide Soyombo, Leonard Stiegeler and a number of Angels.
The startup also raised a non-equity $50,000 last year from participating in Google Launchpad accelerator.
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According to TechCrunch, the startup is looking to use the funds to expand into new markets with Ghana being top of their radar.
Founded in 2015 by Ezra Olubi (CTO) and Shola Akinlade (CEO), Paystack is headquartered in Lagos with offices in San Francisco. It lets "businesses accept payments via credit card, debit card, money transfer and mobile money on their websites or mobile apps."
In June this year, the startup pointed out that it had grown 10x in 2017 and was handling nearly "$10 million in monthly transactions".
It also secured a partnership with Truecaller in July to "to enable more African businesses [to] accept online payments."
"The partnership will also provide powerful tools that businesses and startups across Africa can use to verify the mobile identity of their customers, and in turn, further help in creating more trust in the online payments landscape on the continent," wrote The Guardian Nigeria.