Student Loses $3K, Builds Startup Solving African Payments

Mallick Bolakale lost $3,000 he had saved for law school because of a simple mistake: a friend refreshed an eBay page without turning on a VPN. The platform flagged the transaction as suspicious and cancelled it, but the broker handling the purchase refused to reconnect his card for the refund, worried about fraud.

That was the early 2010s, when buying anything online from Nigeria meant navigating an underground system of VPNs, foreign brokers, and complicated money transfers. Bolakale was repairing and reselling gadgets to fund his education, and that one mishap wiped out everything he had saved.

More than a decade later, he turned that painful lesson into Startbutton Africa, a fintech that helps businesses expand across African markets without rebuilding payment systems, tax compliance, and regulatory relationships from scratch. Co-founded with Kelechi Oti and Charles Idem in July 2023, the startup now operates across 15 African countries including Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda.

The idea started almost by accident. In 2022, while on vacation in Rwanda, a company contacted Bolakale asking for help accessing Nigeria's payment infrastructure without setting up local operations. By then, he had spent a decade working in compliance at companies like Paystack and advising payment firms through regulatory challenges.

He started building a workaround, not thinking it would become a business. When accessing foreign currency became difficult due to central bank restrictions, Bolakale got creative: he listed his house on Airbnb and used the dollar payouts to settle merchants while collecting local currency from customers.

The turning point came when he spotted a tweet from Bible Buddy's founder complaining that despite living in the fintech era, his U.S.-based startup couldn't accept international payments. Bolakale replied, sent a direct message, and Bible Buddy became Startbutton's first customer.

The journey wasn't smooth. Shortly after raising $50,000 from friends and family, their Wise account froze with all the funds inside. For two months, Bolakale self-funded salaries while the team pivoted to settling merchants through stablecoin transactions. When Wise finally released the funds, Startbutton closed a $200,000 round.

The Ripple Effect

What started as one frustrated student losing his tuition has grown into infrastructure serving businesses across the continent. Every company that uses Startbutton avoids the months of legal setup, banking relationships, and compliance headaches that would otherwise slow their expansion.

The same cross-border friction that cost Bolakale his law school fees still exists across Africa, but now there's a solution built by someone who lived through the problem.

From eBay broker to Airbnb landlord to fintech founder, Bolakale proved that sometimes the best entrepreneurs are the ones who got burned first and decided to build the fire extinguisher.