Three companies have been absorbed by a single payments processor in the past 18 months, each one disappearing from Nigeria’s startup landscape.
The Stripe-backed payments processor has been buying smaller competitors, absorbing their technology, and shutting down their consumer-facing products. Customers only learn about these deals when shutdown emails arrive in their inboxes, giving them months to move their money elsewhere.
The latest target once issued cards for some of Nigeria’s biggest fintech names through a single dashboard.
Paystack acquired Allawee in 2025 and is now shutting it down
Allawee, a card-issuing fintech founded in 2022, will permanently close all business and personal accounts on December 1, 2026, TechCabal reported. The closure follows an acquisition by Paystack in 2025 that was never disclosed to the public.
Allawee told customers in two emails that its technology now operates within Paystack, and that cards will stop working regardless of printed expiry dates. Payments sent to Allawee account numbers after the deadline will fail, and balances will not transfer to any new platform. Business customers are being directed to Paystack MFB, while individual users are being directed to Zap, Paystack’s consumer transfer app.
Customers have until November 30 to withdraw balances and share updated banking details with anyone who pays them regularly. Allawee said remaining balances will stay recorded but warned that manual payouts requested by email after the deadline could take significantly longer.
Allawee’s card technology matters more to Paystack than its customer base
Founded by Ikenna Enenwali and Oreofe Olurin, Allawee pivoted twice before settling on card infrastructure as its core product. The startup launched as a credit card lender, shifted to credit-risk assessment software, and then repositioned as a card-issuance platform for fintechs.
Paystack’s acquisition timeline:
- January 2026: Acquired Ladder Microfinance Bank, gaining a banking license in Nigeria
- 2025 (undisclosed): Acquired Allawee for its card-issuing infrastructure and technology
- May 2024: Led a consortium to acquire Brass, a business-banking startup later folded into Paystack MFB
By May 2025, Allawee was issuing cards for PiggyVest, Nomba, and Carbon through a dashboard that dramatically compressed launch timelines. Co-founder Enenwali told TechCabal at the time that building a card program from scratch could take one to two years. That infrastructure likely made Allawee attractive to Paystack, which secured its own banking license through a separate deal in January 2026.
Once Paystack held that license through Ladder MFB, Allawee’s consumer accounts ran directly against products Paystack could now offer itself. The same logic ended Brass, the business-banking startup that Paystack rescued in 2024 and folded into Paystack MFB before July 31 of this year.
“After working with thousands of businesses since 2016, we know payments are only one part of their challenges. This setup lets us respond more directly, without losing focus on what we already do well.” — Shola Akinlade, CEO of Paystack, in a January 2026 statement reported by Billionaires.Africa
Nigeria’s fintech sector is consolidating at record speed
Paystack’s buy-and-absorb pattern mirrors a structural shift across African fintech. TechCabal Insights has tracked 84 M&A deals worth an estimated $11.4 billion in disclosed value across Africa’s tech ecosystem as of August 17, 2026, more than doubling the prior year’s pace.
Lexi Novitske, general partner at Norrsken22, noted that acquisitions in 2026 are focused heavily on AI tools, payments infrastructure, microfinance platforms, and credit underwriting systems as fintechs compete to cut costs and deepen engagement, M&J Consultants reported. Flutterwave’s acquisition of open-banking startup Mono in January reflected the same logic, giving the payments processor direct access to financial data rails that bypass card network fees.
Allawee customers face a hard deadline with no automatic migration
For customers caught in the middle, the timeline is the most pressing concern. There is no seamless migration, no data portability, and no guarantee that balances left after November 30 will be easy to recover.
Key deadlines and actions for Allawee customers
- Withdrawal deadline: All balances must be withdrawn by November 30, 2026, or customers must request manual payouts via email
- Card shutdown: All Allawee-issued cards stop functioning on December 1, regardless of printed expiry dates
- Payment failures: Any payment sent to an Allawee account number after December 1 will fail with no automatic forwarding
- No data migration: Balances, account numbers, transaction history, and verification records will not carry over
- New accounts required: Business customers must open fresh accounts with Paystack MFB; individuals must register with Zap
