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Ezra Olubi, Activist And Technopreneur

Ezra Olubiis a Nigerian information technology expert, LGBT advocate, software engineer, mobile app developer, and entrepreneur born on 12 November 1986. He grew up in Ibadan, a prominent city in Oyo State, Nigeria. After completing his secondary school education he gained admission to study computer science at Babcock University, Illishan Remo, Ogun State between 2002 to 2006. There he met Shola Akinlade who was one of his classmates. In the future, they would become business partners to build Paystack.


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Career

First, He worked as an IT Administrator for Business Management consultants limited. There, he supported the custom-built sales performance reconciliation and rewards software. He then moved to North Ocean Logistics as a Web Applications Developer in November 2006. He helped the company to build cars-ng.com(No longer functional) before he left the company in 2007.

From May 2007 to Aug 2010, he served as a website and applications developer for softcom Nigeria limited. In addition to that, he led and supervised a team of five developers to build reloadng.com, softpurse.com, and many other digital products for the company. Later, he would move to Softcom Imagio Limited in September 2010 as the Head of the product development team in the company.

At Softcom imagio, he built Eyowo.com, a unified payment system for the company. Other places he has worked include Jobberman (Chief Technology Officer) From December 2012 to June 2013, Delivery Science Incorporated (Chief Technology Officer) from March 2014 to September 2015, and Alexander Haring Limited (Director) From May 2012.


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Building Paystack

In October 2015, he partnered with his former classmate Shola Akinlade to build Paystack. Paystack was Shola’s brainchild, however, he reached out to Ezra due to his working experience and intelligence. Before the project, Ezra Olubi worked for a payment company and also received the “Programmer Of The Year” award two times at Babcock University. For this reason, Shola Akinlade believed that Ezra was a perfect fit. And alas, he was right! The former classmates co-founded Paystack and gathered funding from both companies and individual investors.

Now, the company has grown to be one of the top financial service providers in Nigeria. In addition, it is the first tech company in Nigeria to be accepted into Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator program. It is also one of the 3 Nigerian companies on the list of the world’s top 250 FinTech companies. This company boasts of having over 17,000 businesses as customers which include Mtn, Betway, Domino, IrokoTV and Taxify are part. It has its office in both Lagos, Nigeria, and San Francisco, United States. In October 2020, Stripe acquired Paystack for over $200 million.


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What Ezra does now

Now, Ezra works for two companies in Nigeria: as a Director of Magic at Alexander Haring Limited and also the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Paystack. Ezra Olubi is available on various social media platforms.

Instagram: @x0lubi

Twitter: @0x

Facebook @Ezra Olubi

Featured Image Source: Gistvic Blog
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