For as long as I can remember, payments, in general, has been a bit of an issue in Nigeria and Africa at large. While a lot of progress has been made, a lot still needs to happen and we are far from where we should be. There’s hardly a day that goes by without seeing someone asking how they can move money from one African country to the other. Sadly, the existing channel today are either outdated or usually stressful. This is without taking into consideration the ridiculous fees that usually accompany these sort of transactions.

For the longest of time, I have been a sort of a Stripe fanboy. I have read almost any and everything about Stripe that I have come across. I follow their product release and launches religiously. Oh, I am also a big fan of their engineering team. I read the Stripe engineering blog like a bible.

So why am I telling you all this?

In December of 2017, the good people at Paystack had an open house and Loknan was kind enough to extend me an invite. Before that time, I have heard about Paystack and paid some merchants using the company’s checkout form product. So, the company wasn’t new to me. After the event, Shola and I started a conversation about Paystack and what the company had set out to do, to be honest, I was impressed and from that day, I made it my job to follow their roadmap and so far, I must say, I haven’t been disappointed. The company has proved itself more than once. It’s safe to say the won themselves another fanboy.

The thing with me is that, when I like something, I begin to pay a special attention to that thing. This new found interest in Paystack lead me to speak with a couple of the Paystack team members and if there’s one thing that I really admire about them is their level of transparency. I may be wrong, but I think Paystack was the first company that publicly stated their monthly transactions. This was unheard of.

A couple of months ago, Shola and I started yet another conversation, and this time, the more I spoke with him, the more I fell in love with the company. I am quite excited and there’s a reason for that, I am going back to my roots. For anyone that has followed me long enough on Twitter or any of the social media that I am active on, will know how much I love e-commerce and every layer that makes commerce successful. This time, I’m moving further away from retail to payments. Why? At the heart of commerce is payment and for a successful commercial transaction to happen, there must be an exchange of value and in most cases, that value is in the form of money.

Recently, I accepted an offer to become the first Engineering Manager at Paystack. I have spent some time now with the team and I can tell you for a fact that they are good peoples.

Photo credit: Mohini Ufeli

What will I be doing?

I will be leading a bunch of the engineering effort here; hiring, building and scaling the engineering teams. So, reach out to me if you’re interested in solving interesting engineering challenges. We are growing and growing really fast and with this kind of growth comes the usual engineering scaling challenges. Let’s solve this together.

Beyond just working with an amazing group of people, I will do well to share the experiences that we have gathered as we tow this line. This will be majorly technical and business challenges that we are dealing with and how we are addressing them. I will write, like a LOT of writing 🙂

I will also spend time talking to entrepreneurs who are looking to integrate Paystack in their products. I will be speaking more at technology conferences, like a lot more.

I will go into the office more now. Our son’s nanny will now believe I have an actual job. I’ll try to put on a suit every now and then. Hopefully, Shola and Ezra wouldn’t chase me from the office.

Yesterday, I asked my son's nanny what she thought I did for a living, she smiled and said "Oga, you dey siddon here press computer everyday. Na madam dey go work." I am not even mad at her to be honest.

— Celestine Omin (@cyberomin) September 1, 2018

You may ask why Paystack and what are we trying to do here? Well, during the last company’s off-site, Shola stressed the fact that our aim is to increase the Internet GDP in Africa, I like to think about it a bit differently, we are building the PaymentOS for Africa. Simple. If you think about the concept of an operating system, it is that base layer upon which every other thing rides on and that is where Paystack is headed; Africa’s PaymentOS.

This is by no means a simple task, If you will let me borrow a leaf from Bezos’ playbook, we are in day 1 of payments and the journey is only starting.

Finally, I am hiring senior engineers - https://paystack.breezy.hr/p/1fff4d8f532c-senior-software-engineer

It’s a new dawn.

I'll love to hear from you

Do you want to say hello? Email me - celestineomin@gmail.com

I tweet at @cyberomin