Paystack has formally entered Nigeria’s regulated banking space following its acquisition of Ladder Microfinance Bank, a deal announced in mid-January 2026 that marks one of the fintech’s most significant strategic shifts since its launch. The Stripe-owned company, which currently serves more than 300,000 businesses and processes trillions of naira in transactions each month, is positioning itself to move beyond payments into full-stack financial services.
Through the acquisition, Ladder Microfinance Bank has been rebranded as Paystack Microfinance Bank, giving the company a Central Bank of Nigeria-licensed vehicle to hold deposits and issue credit directly. Until now, Paystack relied entirely on partner banks for settlements and could not legally lend or manage customer funds. The licence changes that equation, allowing the fintech to sit closer to Nigeria’s financial core while operating under stricter regulatory oversight.
The move opens the door for Paystack to launch lending products tailored to its merchant base, including working capital loans and other business credit offerings. With access to real-time transaction data from hundreds of thousands of merchants, Paystack is expected to apply data-driven underwriting models to address Nigeria’s estimated ₦13 trillion SME credit gap, a long-standing constraint on small business growth across the country.
Beyond lending, Paystack Microfinance Bank is expected to support treasury services and banking-as-a-service infrastructure, enabling other fintechs and developers to embed regulated banking features into their products. This places Paystack in direct competition with digital finance players such as Moniepoint, OPay, and traditional microfinance banks, while also signaling a shift toward deeper infrastructure ownership rather than surface-level innovation.
For Nigeria’s tech ecosystem, the acquisition reflects a broader maturation of fintech strategy. As payments become increasingly commoditised, leading players are turning to licensed banking structures to unlock new revenue streams and ensure long-term resilience. Paystack’s move underscores a defining theme in Africa’s tech evolution: sustainable scale now depends not just on technology, but on control of the financial rails that power the digital economy.
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