• TSG launches as the parent holding company to a family of complementary brands – including Paystack, Paystack MFB, Zap and TSG Labs (a new venture studio/incubator)
• The group reports profitability following >12x payment volume growth since acquisition by global payments giant Stripe 5 years ago; the announcement coincides with Paystack’s 10-year anniversary in January 2026
• The agreements establishing TSG as the parent holding company were signed in October 2025 and are pending the requisite regulatory approvals 
• TSG Labs will also develop products beyond fintech, including AI-led offerings 

Paystack, a company solving payments problems for ambitious businesses in Africa, has announced the launch of The Stack Group (TSG), a parent holding company that will aggregate the tech-focused family of brands connected with Paystack.

The announcement comes barely few days the acquisition Ladder Microfinance Bank which gives the fintech, owned by Stripe, direct control over deposits and lending, areas where small businesses usually face challenges.

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.

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% of Africa’s GDP.

This product-first approach to pan-African growth has since led to Paystack becoming profitable at the group level, the company announces today.  

Today’s news follows the recent launch of Paystack MFB in Nigeria. Functioning 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.

Providing a corporate umbrella for a family of complementary brands that innovate in different domains, TSG companies will be united by shared values and deep knowledge of building technology products to solve Africa-specific challenges, while remaining operationally independent. At the outset, TSG will include:

• Paystack –  innovates within merchant payments
• Zap – innovates within consumer payments
• Paystack Microfinance Bank – innovates within banking
• TSG Labs – innovates with emerging technologies and builds new products both within and beyond financial technology

Shola Akinlade, CEO and Paystack Founder, says,

“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.”

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

The acquisition gives the fintech, owned by Stripe, direct control over deposits and lending, areas where small businesses usually face challenges.

The newly formed Paystack Microfinance Bank (Paystack MFB) will start by lending to businesses before gradually offering services to consumers. It will also provide banking-as-a-service (BaaS) products to companies developing financial solutions and treasury tools. 

“After 10 years of building payment infrastructure and going deep, we realised that businesses needed more than just getting paid to grow,” Paystack COO Amandine Lobelle said. “We wanted to leverage the expertise that we have built over the last decade to continue to address some of the pain points that (businesses) have.”

Paystack MFB will operate independently alongside Paystack’s payments arm under the oversight of their US parent company. The two entities will collaborate within regulatory boundaries but maintain separate licences, governance, and product offerings. 

This structure allows Paystack to experiment with deposits and loans without taking on the costs or regulations of a full commercial banking licence.

The acquisition comes after Paystack’s consumer-facing initiatives, including the launch of the Zap payments app, and positions the company to tap into Nigeria’s $32 billion small business financing gap. 

In processing payments for over 300,000 businesses monthly, Paystack now has the data and infrastructure to offer loans, overdrafts, and merchant cash advances using live revenue flows rather than traditional financial statements.

“By having consistently high uptime, and making Paystack MFB the fastest, most dependable way to move money in and out of their account or to access it,” Lobelle said, outlining the strategy to make Paystack the primary bank account for businesses.

This approach sets Paystack apart from competitors. Digital-first banks like Kuda built deposits first, then layered in lending. Paystack starts from the infrastructure layer, using payment data to underwrite loans and optimise risk models. 

It will compete with traditional microfinance banks such as LAPO, Accion, and Baobab, as well as embedded-finance players including Moniepoint, OPay, PalmPay, and Kuda.

Despite the expansion, partnerships with commercial banks like Titan Trust for payment processing remain unchanged. Paystack MFB also operates independently of Brass, another business banking venture backed by Paystack-led investors. 

“Brass has its own team, investors. Just like any other financial services platform in Nigeria, Brass would be able to benefit from the banking-as-a-service services from Paystack MFB, but the two are independent,” Lobelle said.

In April 2025, the Central Bank of Nigeria fined Paystack ₦250 million ($190,000) for operating Zap as a wallet without approval. Regulatory clearance for Zap and now Paystack MFB emphasises the company’s compliance and points to trust from regulators in fintechs that meet standards.

Paystack’s strategy is to leverage its decade-long payments expertise to control more of the financial stack, address the SME funding gap, and build a bank that can scale with Nigeria’s internet economy. 

“By adding Paystack MFB to our family of brands, we’re finding the right balance through combining the rapid innovation of a tech-first platform with the stability of traditional banking,” Lobelle said.