Paystack announces new product

Wednesday, 04 October 2023

Good morning!

We begin today with a fresh round of injections for Stitch. The South African fintech announced yesterday that it has raised $25 million in a series A extension round to scale and expand its products geographically.

Then the demand for "pay with bank transfer," has led Paystack to launch a new product. It will now offer virtual terminals, a kind of virtual alternative to PoS.

Meanwhile, users on X are calling for an investigation into OPay. Users who said they never signed up for the Chinese app, say that somehow they have accounts.

If you're in the market for some Silicon Valley tea, a new book on Sam Bankman-Fried is out. Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon by Michael Lewi is a front-row seat into how SBF allegedly scammed the world and brought down promising companies with him.

Finally, the DG of the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) said that Nigeria could earn $400 million annually by becoming a satellite launch destination for other countries if the country develops its Assembly, Integration and Testing Lab (AITL). Facts or fiction?

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Below are the tech stories and news you need to know to start your day, carefully curated by Technext.

Summary of the news

Starlink slashed by 20 per cent of its kits for customers in Nigeria
Paystack has launched virtual terminals
Stitch has raised $25 million in a series A extension round
Nigerians are raising alarms about OPay accounts that they don't remember signing up for

Ecosystem

Stitch's expansion plan: South Africa's Stitch has raised $25 million in a series A extension round to scale and expand its products geographically.

"Our value proposition has been precision engineering and deep infrastructure, so, for instance, we are looking at connecting to card and bank rails without intermediating. Things like this are often slow and capital intensive; that’s why we raised.” Co-founder and CEO Kiaan Pillay said. (Technext)

Other ecosystem news:

Paystack has launched virtual terminals, leveraging on a growing demand for "pay with bank transfer," products. The terminals will serve as a virtual alternative to PoS. (TechCabal)
Many users on X have raised the alarm that they have OPay accounts that they don't remember signing up for. The discovery led to an uproar on social media with many other users trying to make transfers to their phone numbers which OPay uses as account numbers and finding out that it went through. (Nairametrics)

A word from FSDH Merchant Bank

Multiple data sources show that “Female founders received only 1.4% of the total global venture capital funding in Nigeria.” Of the $142.8 million Nigerian startups raised in 2022, female-led start-ups attracted just $24.1m.”

Women account for 41% ownership of these businesses but are still faced with the problem of funding and scaling their businesses.

To rewrite this narrative, FSDH Merchant Bank has partnered with IFC (of the World Bank) and WEAV Capital to bring the Female Founders Growth Programme, for female tech founders. Selected female entrepreneurs get access to qualify for a $10,000 non-equity grant, mentorship sessions, and masterclasses in the Female Founders Investment Readiness Accelerator programme.

Are you a female tech founder, or do you know one? Click here to apply for the Female Founders Growth programme.

Policy

Nigeria's space project: The National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) has said that Nigeria could earn $400 million annually by becoming a satellite launch destination for other countries if the country develops its Assembly, Integration and Testing Lab (AITL).

"We are thinking out of the box because it can bring money and we are letting people know that this can bring money. We are at the equator and getting windows for launch are higher and then the distance to the orbit is shorter. If we can be a launching destination, it means that if we are launching 20 satellites from Nigeria every year, that gives you about 400 million Dollars,’’ Director-General of NASRDA, Halilu Shaba said. (Nairametrics)

Other policy news:

Online pharmacies in Kenya can now promote prescription drugs and related services on Google. This move makes it the first African nation to secure permission from the tech giant to advertise pharmaceutical products across its platforms. (Techpoint Africa)

Social Tech

Audio marketplace: Yesterday Spotify said that it would begin offering 15 hours of audiobooks each month as part of its streaming service for premium subscribers in Britain and Australia. Before the year ends and into the first quarter of next year, it will expand the offering to subscribers in the United States.

The move comes as the company has struggled to rejig its operation, tailing Apple Music and mounting losses for the past four years. CEO Daniel Ek is now betting on transforming the company's focus from music and podcasts to an everything audio store.

Already, Hachette Book Group, whose authors include David Sedaris, James Patterson and Donna Tartt, is putting more than 7,000 books on Spotify. (New York Times)

Other social tech news:

Netflix plans to raise the price of its ad-free service. (Wall Street Journal)
Microsoft announced that OpenAI’s latest DALL-E 3 model is now available to all Bing Chat and Bing Image Creator users. (TheVerge)
Starlink is now offering a 20% discount on its kit from ₦378,000 ($378) to ₦299,000 ($299) for customers in Nigeria. (TechCabal)
Meta’s text-based chat feature for Horizon Worlds will be available for all users beginning this week. Meta first launched World Chat in a limited way in June. (TheVerge)
Apple is locking down its App Store in China to comply with a new law that states it must have an Internet Content Provider license in the country. (TheVerge)

Global News

New tycoon chronicles: The author of The Big Short and Moneyball, Michael Lewis' new book on Sam Bankman-Fried, Going Infinite is now on sale just as SBF prepares to go to trial for fraud allegations. The book follows SBF's journey from childhood to his career at FTX, the crypto company that led to his downfall.

Lewis depicts Bankman-Fried as delusional and often callous in his treatment of co-workers, a young entrepreneur who “thought grown-ups were pointless” and left messes for other people to clean up.

Lewis also expresses scepticism about the lawyers and executives who were brought in to manage FTX’s bankruptcy and have become some of Bankman-Fried’s fiercest public critics. (New York Times)

Other global news:

Actor Tom Hanks and famous journalist Gayle King have separately warned their followers on social media that videos using artificial intelligence likenesses of them, were being used for fraudulent advertisements and not with their consent. (New York Times)
X Corp, formerly Twitter, has been sued by a legal marketing company, X Social Media, claiming that the social media giant's new name infringes its trademark by incorporating the letter "X." (Reuters)
Visa has announced a new $100 million generative AI venture initiative to invest in companies focused on developing generative AI technologies and applications that will impact the future of commerce and payments. The initiative will be led by Visa Ventures, its global corporate investment arm. (Nairametrics)
Amazon used an algorithm code-named “Project Nessie” to test how much it could raise prices in a way that competitors would follow, according to redacted portions of the Federal Trade Commission’s monopoly lawsuit against the company. (Wall Street Journal)
Amazon Studios has changed its name to Amazon MGM Studios, announced Pablo Iacoviello, director of monetization for local originals at the studio since April. (Variety)
Twitch has laid off employees for the second time this year. The cuts were significantly smaller than the March round, which included more than 400 people. (Games Industry)
Campbell Brown, a former TV anchor who led Meta's foray into news, is leaving the company. (Axios)
Meta is planning to lay off employees today in the unit of its metaverse-oriented Reality Labs division focused on creating custom silicon. (Reuters)