Shola Akinlade is CEO and co-founder of Paystack, a technology company powering payments and growth for businesses in Africa. 

Over 60,000 businesses of all sizes - from startups to government agencies - use Paystack's robust suite of payments APIs to collect and transfer online and offline payments securely. Paystack is now live in Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, and will soon be live in Kenya, accelerating growth for Africa's most ambitious companies and helping them launch new business models, and deepen their customer relationships.

Paystack was the first Nigerian company to be accepted into Silicon Valley-based accelerator, Y Combinator, and has raised over $10 million from both international and local investors including Stripe, Visa, Tencent, Y Combinator, Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund, Blue Haven Ventures, and Ventures Platform. The company was acquired by Stripe in 2020 but continues to scale independently across the Continent. 

Prior to Paystack, Shola co-founded Precurio, an open-source collaboration software for businesses in emerging markets which was downloaded over 150,000 times and made available in 6 languages. Shola holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Babcock University.