Less than a year after launching a club —Sporting Lagos Football Club in Nigeria’s commercial capital city— Shola Akinlade, the co-founder and CEO of Paystack, a prominent payment platform in Nigeria, has broadened his entrepreneurial horizons by acquiring Aarhus Fremad, a Danish second-division club, marking his entry into the European sports industry. Under the terms of the recent transaction, the Nigerian fintech founder acquired a 55 per cent stake in the club, thus, becoming the majority owner of Aarhus Fremad with the aim of revitalizing the club. Aarhus Fremad occupies the top spot in the Danish second division, boasting a six-point lead, which bodes well for their promotion to the top division by the end of the season.
As part of a strategic endeavour to create a contemporary football club that will foster the development of the next generation of Nigerian sporting talent, Akinlade has invested scores of millions on Sporting Lagos which presently has become one of the rapidly expanding private football clubs in Nigeria and is presently competing in the Nigeria National League, the country’s second-division league.
As the CEO and co-founder of Paystack, one of Nigeria’s leading payment platforms, Akinlade has been instrumental in driving the technological disruption that has revolutionized the African financial services industry. His start-up remains at the forefront of the push for payments and business growth throughout the continent. In 2020, Paystack was acquired by Stripe for a whopping $200 million, and it currently processes close to 50 per cent of all online payments in Nigeria.