When Mallick Bolakale, Co-founder & CEO of Startbutton, first joined Paystack as Compliance Lead and Charles Idem, now Co-founder & CCO of Startbutton, was heading Sales, neither of them knew their collaboration would later spark a new venture.
But working side by side inside one of Africa’s fastest-growing fintechs exposed them to a recurring challenge - foreign companies eager to expand across Africa kept hitting regulatory and compliance roadblocks, while sales opportunities slipped away.
“It was painful watching businesses walk away simply because the rules made it hard to operate without a local presence,” Mallick recalls. That frustration soon became inspiration.
Along with a shared drive to fix the problem, the two cofounders left Paystack to launch Startbutton, a platform designed to help businesses incorporate instantly, stay compliant, and scale into new African markets with ease.
When Mallick looks back, he often describes his path as an “accidental transition” from law to tech. “I always wanted to study law,” he recalls. “I did my diploma in law, went to the University of Ilorin, and later got called to the Nigerian Bar. But at the same time, I had discovered tech back in 2010 while working in a software company. I started with hardware engineering, fixing and building desktops for government institutions, then taught myself coding and software development.”
That dual track of law and technology would later become the foundation for Startbutton. Even as he practiced litigation and corporate law, he found himself supporting tech startups with legal, regulatory, and compliance issues.
After a master’s in cyber law from the University of Lagos, he co-founded a law firm focused on startups. Among the clients was Paystack, the Nigerian fintech acquired by Stripe, where he later joined to lead compliance. “At Paystack, I helped the team automate a lot of compliance processes and went on to lead the compliance team,” he says.
At Paystack, he ran headlong into a recurring problem. “The law didn’t allow us to onboard foreign companies without a local presence. It was the same challenge across Africa. Regulators required a local setup, which meant we were losing businesses that wanted to operate here,” he explains. As both a lawyer and someone who thought like a builder, it was a painful reality. “I’m not just a compliance person. Deep down, I’m also a business person. It hurt to watch opportunities slip away.”
That frustration eventually became the seed for Startbutton. After leaving Paystack and taking a short sabbatical, he began exploring how to solve the regulatory bottleneck. “A payment company reached out - they had to offboard foreign clients because of compliance issues. I stepped in and said, let’s build something that helps these companies sell locally while meeting tax, AML, and consumer protection requirements. That’s how Startbutton started,” he says.
The early days were far from glossy. “We didn’t start with a product. Everything was manual. We wanted to prove the problem was real and solvable. Only after that did we start building in January and launched in July,” he recalls. Today, more than two years later, Startbutton is evolving into a key player in building Africa’s payment rails for the AfCFTA era.
Co-founders Charles and Kelechi brought in the missing pieces of the puzzle. “Charles and I had worked together at Paystack - he was leading sales while I handled compliance. He understood the business side deeply. And Kelechi, with her background in fintechs like Terragon, Kobo 360, and even Microsoft, brought the technical edge we needed,” he explains. Together, they’ve built a company tackling one of the most pressing barriers to cross-border trade in Africa: compliance as infrastructure.
More than fintech Solving Africa’s cross-border payment challenges
Startbutton helps businesses expand globally in minutes, acting as a ‘merchant of record’ so that companies don’t have to wrestle with local payment systems, bank account issues, or tax complexities in each country they want to sell in.
They offer an all-in-one platform where you integrate once and you get a suite of tools covering multi-currency sales, payment orchestration, tax compliance, and merchant onboarding.
“Let’s say you run a blog or a news site,” he began. “You decide to put up a paywall and charge readers $1 a month for exclusive content. The problem starts when I, sitting in Nigeria, want to subscribe. I can’t easily pay you that $1. Maybe I use mobile money and don’t even own a card, or my local card just won’t go through on Stripe or another international gateway. At best, you’d see a 30% success rate.”
The frustration for companies across Africa has always been the same: the customer wants to pay, but local rails and regulations get in the way. In many cases, businesses lose revenue and reputation when payments fail, and disgruntled customers file chargebacks.
Startbutton flips that experience by making the transaction local. “What we do is simple - we sell a company’s service locally on their behalf,” Mallick explained. “So instead of a company’s customers in Nigeria worrying about paying a foreign company in dollars, they’re actually buying from its local entity through us, which gives them comfort. If something goes wrong at 10 p.m., they know they can reach a local entity, not some faceless business abroad.”
By localizing payments, Startbutton ensures near-perfect success rates. Behind the scenes, Startbutton handles it all. The customer pays in naira, cedis, or shillings, the regulator gets its share, payment processors earn their fees, and the original service provider receives their dollar-denominated subscription. “Everybody is happy - the regulator, the customer, the business, and the processors,” Mallick said with a smile.
The secret sauce of Startbutton’s success
For Mallick, what makes Startbutton stand out isn’t just the payments piece - it’s the compliance layer woven into the platform. “That’s really our biggest differentiator,” he said. “Plenty of companies handle cross-border payments, but very few are offering Merchant of Record services. And there’s a world of difference between the two.”
He’s quick to point out that this is often misunderstood, even by investors. “People tend to equate MoR with remittance. But they’re not the same. Yes, some of what we do overlaps with remittance because money still has to move. But our business model at its core is very different.”
Beyond compliance, Startbutton also brings something many rivals can’t match: deep pan-African expertise and networks. Over the years, the team has built relationships and infrastructure across markets that smoothen expansion for global businesses. “A lot of what we’re doing today, our competitors simply don’t have,” Mallick added. “In fact, several of them are actually working with us quietly in the background, which, to me, is both validation and exciting.”
In just two years since launch, Startbutton has grown into 15 African markets, processing close to $8 million in payments every month. The team has deliberately hit pause on rapid expansion to double down on product—building automation, orchestration, and smart routing features that allow payments to move seamlessly across Africa, no matter the region or rails.
“We want our customers to stop worrying about which partner can process a transaction in which market. Things should just work,” Mallick explained. Today, Startbutton is already backed by 50–60 partnerships across the continent, powering its compliance-first infrastructure. For a startup still early in its journey, the scale is striking. “We’ve done all of this in just two years,” Mallick said. “And we can only hope for more going forward.”
Breaking through skepticism and building trust
Every startup founder has battle scars, and for Mallick, building Startbutton meant navigating a maze of skepticism, trust gaps, and regulatory hurdles.
“The first challenge was simply getting people to understand what we do,” he recalled.
Trust, Mallick admitted, was an even bigger barrier. “I remember getting on a call with a potential customer. They loved the idea but were holding back. Midway through, I mentioned some of the companies I had worked with, and suddenly one of them said, ‘You should have started with this. I wasn’t sure about you, but now I know you must be building something credible.’”
Fundraising rounds and strategic partnerships later helped to cement that trust, but in the early days, it was an uphill climb.
Then came regulators. Too often, banking partners and authorities lumped Startbutton in with remittance businesses, leading to offboarding threats or outright rejections. “We had to proactively engage regulators, explain our model, secure letters of no objection, and push for approvals,” Mallick explained. “It gave partners comfort, but it’s still a recurring challenge every time we enter a new market.”
Even merchants posed unexpected complications. Many struggled to categorize Startbutton: was it a payment company, a merchant of record, or something else entirely? “New concepts always face skepticism,” Mallick said. “It’s like when payment switches first emerged - people didn’t know what they were, or what would happen if the switch just disappeared. But over time, adoption follows.”
Operating across 15 countries today adds a whole new layer of complexity. “Working in one African market can sometimes be more difficult than operating across the whole of Europe,” Mallick reflected. “Now imagine scaling across 15, with the goal of eventually covering all 54. The regulations, cultures, and languages are so fragmented that every single market feels like a fresh challenge.”
For Mallick and his team, however, those obstacles are also the reason Startbutton exists - to remove friction and make expansion simpler for others.
The road ahead
When asked about the future of Startbutton, Mallick was candid. “To be honest, we don’t exactly know where this will take us,” he admitted. “But our focus is clear: we want to build a truly Pan-African trade platform - a single gateway for anyone looking to start or expand a business anywhere in Africa. Whenever someone thinks about entering the African market, we want Startbutton to be the first solution that comes to mind.”
The team’s vision goes beyond just compliance and payments. “We’re building tools that make it seamless for companies to operate across borders,” Mallick explained. “In the coming months, we’re exploring ways to enable near-instant payments for all trades across Africa, so businesses can operate like locals in every country, even if they’re not physically there. It’s ambitious, but that’s exactly what makes it exciting.”
Entrepreneurial lessons
When it comes to lessons from his entrepreneurial journey, Mallick admits he’s still learning. “I’ve realized the biggest mistake you can make is assuming,” he shared. “Just because something works in one market doesn’t mean it will work in another. You need to test, observe, and experience it yourself to truly understand the challenges.”
He also pointed out the gap between perceived demand and actual adoption. “We built Startbutton to solve a real problem, and I assumed businesses would jump on it immediately. That wasn’t the case. Some conversations take weeks, others take years. Just because a problem exists doesn’t mean everyone wants it fixed. You learn to be patient, persistent, and to validate everything before moving forward.”
With vision, persistence, and a knack for solving real problems, Startbutton is poised to reshape how commerce flows across the continent, proving that with the right blend of compliance, technology, and ambition, African startups can set new global benchmarks.