Ezra Olubi: Biography, Paystack, family, facts & more

Name	Ezra Olubi
Known for	Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Paystack
Alma mater	Babcock University, located in Illishan Remo, Ogun State, Nigeria
Date of birth	12 November 1986
Ethnicity	Yoruba
Place of birth	Ibadan in Oyo State, Nigeria
Occupation	IT Expert, Software Engineer, Mobile App Developer, and Entrepreneur

Who is Ezra Olubi?

Ezra Olubi is a Nigerian information technology expert, software engineer, mobile app developer, and entrepreneur. He is popularly known as a co-founder and CTO at Paystack.

Ezra Olubi graduated from Babcock University in Nigeria, where he studied computer science alongside Shola Akinlade. After obtaining his Bachelor’s degree, he worked with North Ocean Logistics and Solutions Limited, Softcom Imagio Limited, Softcom Limited Nigeria, Jobberman Limited, Delivery Science Incorporation, Alexander Haring Limited, and of course, Paystack.

Close to the end of 2015, Ezra Olubi co-founded Paystack alongside Shola Akinlade.

Paystack is an African Fintech company that allows vendors, banks, companies, businesses, and their customers to send and receive payments on the internet. This can be done through debit and credit cards, money transfers, and mobile money apps. Paystack lets businesses secure payments, both locally and internationally.

Paystack was successful, and it became the leading payment system in Nigeria. It attracted the attention of Stripe, a payment processing, and software programming company. Paystack was acquired by Stripe in 2020, for USD 200 million. After that, Paystack expanded its operation to other countries of Africa.

Ezra Olubi’s early life and education

Ezra Olubi was born to his parents on 12 November 1986. He was born and grew up in Ibadan, a city in Oyo State, Nigeria.

After completing his secondary school education, he enrolled and commenced his university education at Babcock University, Illishan Remo, Ogun State, Nigeria. He was studying Computer Science between 2002 to 2006.

Ezra Olubi graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 2006, alongside Shola Akinlade. The duo didn’t have many interactions as of then. Their reunion happened when Shola requested Ezra’s help in starting Paystack.

Ezra Olubi: Career and employment history

Business Management Consultants Limited

Before having any work experience, Ezra Olubi served as an IT Administrator for Business Management Consultants Limited. Here he supported a custom-built sales performance reconciliation and rewards software. He also performed some general IT services.

This was in 2006, the same year he graduated from Babcock University. 

North Ocean Logistics and Solutions Limited

Between November 2006 to April 2007, Ezra Olubi worked for North Ocean Logistics. For 6 months, he worked as a Web Applications Developer and helped the company to create the now-defunct cars-ng.com.

Softcom Limited Nigeria

Between May 2007 to Aug 2010, Ezra Olubi worked for Softcom as a website and applications developer. In fact, he also led and supervised a team of five developers.

He helped the company to create reloadng.com, softpurse.com, and many other digital products.

Later in July 2008, he was promoted/appointed as the Head Developer of Softcom. This went on for the next 2 years and 2 months, until August 2010.

Softcom Imagio Limited

Between September 2010 to July 2012, Ezra Olubi was working for Softcom Imagio. He was the Head of the product development team in the company.

He created Eyowo.com for the company. Eyowo is a unified payment system that aims to reduce the barrier of entry for prospective eCommerce players in Nigeria and also the rest of Africa.

Jobberman Limited

Jobberman is a leading recruitment website in Nigeria with more than 2.5 million job applicants and 60,000 employers nationwide. Jobberman was founded in 2009 and has its headquarters in Marina, Lagos. 

Between December 2012 to June 2013, Ezra Olubi was the Chief Technology Officer at Jobberman. He was the one that undertook scaling operations for Jobberman in relocating from their initial server stack to a cloud-based architecture. It was as a result of this operation that Jobberman was able to process tens of millions of transactions daily.

Ezra Olubi also ensured that Jobberman was readily available and reachable. He ensured an uptime of 99.9% for their applications. He also directed the rewriting of problematic sections of the code base that had been written before Jobberman became a large website with lots of monthly visits.

Delivery Science Incorporation

From March 2014 to September 2015, Ezra Olubi was employed as the Chief Technology Officer of Delivery Science Inc. He oversaw the technology and innovation activities in this company. 

He also directed the team responsible for the development and management of all website and mobile applications.

Alexander Haring Limited

From May 2012, Ezra Olubi has been working as the Director of Magic at Alexander Haring Ltd. He offers technical advice to companies. He also directs the development team responsible for in-house projects.

Paystack

This is the company where Ezra Olubi became popular.

In October 2015, he co-founded Paystack together with Shola Akinlade, the man behind the idea. Shola was one of his coursemates at Babcock University. Then, he was working on a payment project, a project that later became what people know as Paystack.

Having known Ezra Olubi all along, knowing his intelligence and working experience, Shola Akinlade requested his help.

Prior to this, Ezra Olubi has worked for a payment company, while he also received the “Programmer Of The Year” award two times at Babcock University. This led Shola Akinlade to believe that Ezra is the right man for the job. And alas, he was right!

The two computer science graduates and software engineers co-founded Paystack and gathered funding from several companies and individual investors. The biggest event happened in October 2020, when Stripe acquired Paystack for over $200 million.

Where is Ezra Olubi now?

Ezra Olubi currently works for two companies in Nigeria. He will also probably be handling some undisclosed projects at the moment.

He is presently a Director of Magic at Alexander Haring Limited and also the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Paystack.

National award

On the 11th of October 2022, Shola Akinlade was conferred with a Nigerian national award. He was made an Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) by President Muhammadu Buhari.

He became the social media talking point after the event show, with a video of the president staring at him trending on Twitter and other social media platforms.

Ezra Olubi on social media

Ezra Olubi is available on various social media platforms. He is also on LinkedIn.

• Instagram: @x0lubi
• Twitter: @0x
• Facebook @Ezra Olubi
• LinkedIn
• Crunchbase