Nigerian fintech giant, Paystack has taken its boldest step yet beyond payments, acquiring Ladder Microfinance Bank. The fintech giant has quickly rebranded its new acquisition as Paystack Microfinance Bank (MFB) in a strategic shift that could reshape how African businesses access credit, deposits, and embedded financial services.

After nearly a decade building the backbone of online payments in Nigeria, the deal gives Paystack regulatory cover to hold deposits, lend directly to businesses and offer banking-as-a-service products.

More importantly, Paystack’s chief operating officer, Amandine Lobelle, highlighted that it allows the company to exert greater control over the trillions of naira that already flow through its platform every month, turning transaction data into a powerful engine for credit and treasury products.

“After 10 years of building payment infrastructure and going deep, we realised that businesses needed more than just getting paid to grow. 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,” said Lobelle.

Paystack MFB will operate as a sister company to its payments business, initially focusing on working capital loans, merchant cash advances, overdrafts and term loans for small and medium-sized enterprises.

By using real-time payment data to underwrite loans, Paystack believes it can offer faster approvals and more accurate risk pricing than traditional lenders, directly tackling Nigeria’s estimated $32 billion small business financing gap.

For Paystack, founded in 2016 and acquired by Stripe in 2020, the move marks a strategic evolution from being just a payments processor to becoming a core part of the financial operating system for African businesses.

Today, Paystack supports more than 300,000 businesses across Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa and has become one of Africa’s most trusted fintech infrastructure providers.

The banking licence is a game-changer as payments, once Paystack’s main growth engine, are increasingly commoditised across Africa. Lending, deposits and treasury services offer deeper margins, stickier relationships and long-term sustainability.

By layering banking services on top of payments, Paystack is betting that infrastructure depth will outperform flashy consumer scale.

However, the move also throws the Nigerian-born fintech giant into fierce competition with digital -first lenders and neobanks such as Moniepoint, Kuda, OPay and PalmPay, which already operate at massive scale. Still, Paystack’s strength lies in its merchant-first focus and developer-friendly APIs.

Federal Government has suspended the issuance of implementation guidelines for the new tax laws due to lingering doubts about their final version, Taiwo Oyedele, Chairman of the Presidential Tax Reform Committee, disclosed on Wednesday.​

Speaking in Lagos after delivering a keynote address on the 2026 Economic Outlook, organised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) under the theme ‘ICAN@60: Accountability as the Bedrock for National Development,’ Oyedele said he directed the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) and Joint Revenue Board (JRB) to hold off on guidelines.​

He explained that his team purchased a printed copy from the government printer to verify authenticity, only to learn the National Assembly had seized all copies pending completion of its review. “The Acts Authentication Act says whatever the government printer publishes is the evidence of the law. But lawmakers said it’s not what they passed,” Oyedele stated.​

Efforts by Nigeria CommunicationsWeek to reach Senate spokesman, Senator Yemi Adaramodu (APC, Ekiti South), and House of Representatives spokesman, Akin Rotimi, yielded no response, as calls went unanswered and messages unread.​

Oyedele acknowledged legislative review as standard but stressed the access restriction reintroduces uncertainty. He instructed his staff to persistently follow up in person at the printer.

Oyedele dismissed allegations of significant alterations to the gazetted versions of the National Revenue Service (Establishment) Act, Joint Revenue Board of Nigeria (Establishment) Act, Nigeria Tax Administration Act, and Nigeria Tax Act, which took effect January 1.​

He insisted minor discrepancies do not impact key elements like tax rates, burdens, or filing deadlines. In December, Rep. Abdussamad Dasuki (PDP, Sokoto) raised a privilege matter at the House plenary, highlighting differences between passed versions and gazetted copies after comparing them with Votes and Proceedings.​

The House formed a seven-man probe committee, which reported by December 25. On January 3, the National Assembly released Certified True Copies (CTCs) affirming the original passed texts and rejecting the controversial gazettes.

Oyedele decried opposition to reforms, including paid protests and misinformation. “We’ve seen people paid N30 million to protest; the deal broke during sharing, and some spoke to media,” he revealed.

He cited a November 2025 incident where fake news triggered panic sales, wiping N4.6 trillion off the stock market despite exemptions for turnover up to N150 million annually. “That fake news led to real losses, even for pensioners via PFAs,” he warned.

Linking to the event theme, Oyedele called accountability the bridge from reforms to results, urging trust-building, knowledge-seeking, and execution focus.

Panelists advocated coordinated efforts. LCCI Director-General Dr. Chinyere Almona called for inter-agency engagement, technology, and centralised monitoring to resolve policy conflicts.

MAN Director-General Segun Ajayi-Kadir sought inclusive growth without hurting competitiveness, noting manufacturing’s sub-10% GDP share, sector challenges, and N2 trillion in unsold inventory.

Session chair Mohammed Hayatudeen described 2026 as a pivotal year post-2023/2024 turbulence, with stabilised inflation, exchange rates, and reserves, but persistent high poverty. He questioned if tax policy ambition matches administrative capacity.

ICAN President Mallam Haruna Nma Yahaya welcomed guests, emphasising accountability for economic stability amid fragile recovery. He highlighted 2025 gains: GDP growth over 4% in Q2, inflation easing to mid-14s, forex reserves at multi-year highs, trade surpluses, and PMI at 57.6.

Yet, he cautioned fragility without discipline. “Accountability is an economic imperative,” Yahaya said, citing global evidence on strong institutions, and urged practical solutions for governance.

Paystack, the Nigerian fintech company backed by global payments giant Stripe, has made a strategic entry into the regulated banking space in Nigeria with the acquisition of Ladder Microfinance Bank, which has now been rebranded as Paystack Microfinance Bank (Paystack MFB).

Paystack Microfinance Bank (Paystack MFB)

Founded in 2015 as a payment infrastructure provider, Paystack has powered digital and physical commerce for hundreds of thousands of businesses, processing huge transaction volumes monthly, but its previous licence restricted it to payments, without permission to hold deposits or issue loans.

The acquisition of Ladder MFB provides a regulated platform for deposit-taking, credit and other banking services, enabling Paystack to evolve from a pure payments processor into a broader financial services provider.
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According to the company, the move is driven by the need to offer businesses not just payment acceptance, but a full financial operating system to manage and grow their finances.

Paystack MFB will initially focus on business lending, including working capital loans, merchant cash advances, overdraft facilities and term loans, aimed at closing long‑standing funding gaps for small and medium enterprises often underserved by traditional banks.

By leveraging Paystack’s rich transaction data, the bank plans to assess credit risk in real time and approve loans faster with more tailored terms than conventional lenders.​

Over time, Paystack MFB intends to expand into consumer lending and savings products, bringing retail banking services to individuals, while also building a strong Banking‑as‑a‑Service (BaaS) offering that will allow other fintechs and developers to embed digital accounts, savings and payment features into their own products without obtaining their own banking licence.

This positions the microfinance bank not only as a lender and deposit‑taker, but as a platform for wider innovation in Africa’s digital economy.

Although it sits under the broader Paystack group, Paystack MFB is structured as an independently governed entity with its own licence, governance framework and product roadmap, ensuring regulatory compliance while allowing both the payments and banking arms to focus on their core mandates.

Paystack Payments Limited will continue to run the payment processing and infrastructure business, while the microfinance bank builds out regulated banking services.

Industry analysts say the entry of Paystack into banking will heighten competition for traditional microfinance banks such as LAPO and Accion, as well as digital‑first challengers like Moniepoint, OPay and Kuda, while also deepening financial inclusion by using digital transaction data instead of legacy collateral‑based methods for SME credit.

The deal reinforces a broader trend of fintechs moving from single‑product offerings to integrated financial ecosystems that combine payments, lending, deposits and platform services under one roof, with Paystack’s acquisition of Ladder MFB marking a new phase in Nigeria’s fintech evolution.