Paystack Acquires Allawee, Ending Its Standalone Card Business

Paystack Acquires Allawee, Ending Its Standalone Card Business

Quick Reads

• Paystack acquires Allawee, and the fintech will shut down its independent operations by December 1, 2026.
• Allawee confirmed the deal through emails sent directly to its customers, not through a public announcement.
• Business customers will move to Paystack MFB, while individual users shift to Paystack’s consumer app, Zap.
• This marks Paystack’s second acquisition-and-shutdown move in 2026, following its earlier absorption of Brass.
• Customers must withdraw balances and update payment details before the November 30 deadline arrives.

Paystack acquires Allawee in a deal that stayed quiet until customers received closure emails this week. The Nigerian card-issuing fintech will shut its business and personal account services on December 1, 2026. Paystack completed the acquisition back in 2025, but neither company announced it publicly at the time.

In two emails seen by TechCabal, Allawee told customers its technology now runs inside Paystack’s infrastructure. Consequently, any payment sent to an Allawee account after December 1 will fail. Cards linked to the platform will also stop working, regardless of their printed expiry dates.

This is not Paystack’s first quiet consolidation this year. The company folded business banking startup Brass into its microfinance bank in June. Meanwhile, Paystack had already acquired Ladder Microfinance Bank in January, which gave it a full banking licence. That earlier move mirrors a broader shift across Nigeria’s fintech sector, one Glostarep previously covered as rivals like Flutterwave chased their own banking status.

Allawee launched in 2022 under co-founders Ikenna Enenwali and Oreofe Olurin. The startup pivoted twice before settling on card infrastructure. By May 2025, it was issuing cards for Piggyvest, Nomba, and Carbon through a streamlined dashboard. Enenwali had told TechCabal that the company aimed to rebuild fintechs’ trust in card products.

Now, Allawee’s assets split between two Paystack units. Business accounts move to Paystack MFB, the bank created from the Ladder acquisition. Individual users shift to Zap, Paystack’s transfer app. However, balances and transaction histories will not carry over automatically. Customers must therefore open new accounts and manually request payouts before the deadline.

Analysts see a clear pattern forming. Nigeria’s 2020-2022 funding boom left many fintechs building overlapping products. Tighter capital and closer regulatory scrutiny have since pushed the market toward consolidation. As a result, acquiring a rival is often cheaper than building similar infrastructure from scratch.