What are the supported industries and categories on Paystack?

When filling the Compliance form on your Paystack Dashboard, you must select the appropriate Industry and Category for your business. In the Paystack context, an Industry refers to the broad, general sector in which you operate your business. On the other hand, a Category is a more specific classification that provides more insight into the goods and services for which you will be receiving payments through Paystack.

Below is a list of all the industries and categories we support at Paystack. If you’re having trouble deciding which industry and category will be appropriate for your business, please reach out to us at support@paystack.com and we’d be happy to provide more clarity.

Agriculture

The agriculture industry includes businesses that are engaged in growing crops, raising fish and animals, and logging wood. This also includes farms, dairies, and ranches. The business categories under the Agriculture industry include:

• Agricultural Cooperatives: These are largely membership associations and include farmers who pool resources to provide certain benefits for their members. They are farmers’ associations that provide farm management services, market farm produce, and provide farmers with assistance in their farming operations. Their scope of operation usually involves providing loans to members, marketing and processing of farm produce as well as supply of agricultural inputs for production.
• Agricultural Services: This covers businesses that offer services related to agriculture such as consulting, soil preparation, crop planting and harvesting services, veterinary services, farm labor contractors, landscaping, horticulture and farm management services.

Commerce

Commerce refers to the buying and selling of goods or services over the internet, and the transfer of money electronically and data to execute these transactions. The business categories under the Commerce industry include:

• Automobiles: Businesses in this category sell motor vehicles and spare parts.
• Digital Goods: These businesses sell products that are electronically transferred to the customer. Examples of these goods include media (music, movies, e-books, videos, magazines, audiobooks), games, digital images, software and website templates.
• Physical Goods: These are businesses that sell any type of tangible goods that can be physically touched.
• Real Estate: This category covers businesses that offer rental sales and property management services.
• Digital Services: This describes service providers who offer services delivered via the internet. Businesses in this category are receiving payments for the service offered as opposed to goods (as found in the Digital Goods category). Examples of businesses that fall under this category are online advertising agencies, freelance web developers, online video streaming/ education platforms, web-hosting service providers, e.t.c.
• Legal Services: These are businesses that provide legal advice and services.
• Physical Services: These are commercial enterprises that provide work performed in an expert manner by an individual or team for the benefit of its customers. A typical service business provides intangible products. These services may vary from consulting, cleaning, landscaping, education/teaching and plumbing services.
• Professional Services: These are businesses that provide professional advice and services.

Education

This industry consists of establishments that provide instruction and training on a wide variety of subjects. These institutions, including schools, colleges, universities and training centres, are either privately or publicly owned. The business categories under the Education industry include:

• Nursery Schools: This category covers nursery schools and creches, usually for children below the age of five.
• Primary Schools: This category encompasses all primary schools, usually for children between the ages of about five and eleven.
• Secondary Schools: This category covers secondary or high schools.
• Tertiary Institutions: This category covers institutes of higher education beyond secondary schools. This includes universities, polytechnics, colleges of education, e.t.c.
• Vocational Training: Businesses in this category offer education services that prepare people for various jobs such as a trade or a craft. Vocational education is sometimes referred to as career and technical education.
• Virtual Learning: These businesses offer educational services on a digital platform.
• Other Educational Services: This refers to businesses that are not schools but still offer education-related services.

Financial Services

This covers a broad range of businesses that manage money - not limited to but including credit unions, banks, credit-card companies, insurance companies, accountancy companies, lending companies, stockbrokers and investment funds. This could be privately owned managers or some government-sponsored enterprises. The business categories under the Financial Services industry include:

• Financial Cooperatives: These are financial institutions owned and operated by its members. They tend to offer services such as savings, lending, investments and sometimes insurance.
• Corporate Services: These businesses provide tax, accounting, audit, and consulting services.
• Payment Solution Service Providers: Businesses in this category include payment gateways, POS agents and Switches.
• Insurance: These companies provide policies in which an individual or entity receives financial protection or reimbursement against losses.
• Investments: These are financial entities involved in investing funds pooled by investors into financial securities. They also hold and manage these securities for their customers.
• Agricultural Investments: Businesses in this category offer investment services in the agriculture sector. They invest funds pooled from their customers in agricultural processes and share the profits with their customers.
• Lending: These are financial entities that offer loan services to their customers.
• Bill Payments: Businesses in this category help their customers accept e-payments. They act as middlemen for their consumers and handle all payment transactions. Their services include receiving e-payments, disbursements and bill payment services.
• Payroll: Businesses in this category provide automated payroll services to their customers. This service involves receiving salary/wages from their customers (the employer) and then remitting these funds to the employees of that business. They also help their customers with tax filings for their employees.
• Remittances: These businesses provide remittance services, which is basically a transfer of money, often by an individual to other beneficiaries.
• Savings: These are non-bank financial institutions that offer savings services to their customers.
• Mobile Wallets: These businesses offer a virtual or digital wallet mobile to their customers where they can move money and either make payments within the wallet companies ecosystem or make disbursements into bank accounts.

Gaming

This includes businesses that offer services that involve placing a wager, purchasing a lottery ticket, sports betting, spread betting and prediction services or the purchase of chips or other value usable for gambling. The business categories under the Gaming industry include:

• Betting: Sports betting is the activity of predicting sports results and placing a wager on the outcome. Businesses in this category provide odds on which their customers place bets for or against a team.
• Lotteries: These are businesses that enable their customers to purchase numbered tickets in a game of chance. Sometimes this is operated by the state government, in which players choose numbers that are matched against those of the official drawing, the winning numbers typically paying large cash prizes.
• Prediction Services: Businesses in this category are mainly tipsters who regularly provide information (tips) on the likely outcomes of sporting events on internet sites or special betting places.

Health

The health industry is an aggregation of sectors that provides goods and services to treat patients with curative, preventive, rehabilitative, and palliative care. The business categories under the Health industry include:

• Gyms: A Gym (health club, fitness centre, health spa) is a place that houses exercise equipment for the purpose of physical exercise.
• Hospitals: A Hospital is an institution that is built and equipped for the diagnosis of disease; for the treatment, both medical and surgical, of the sick and the injured; and for their housing during this process. Some hospitals also often serve as a centre for investigation and for teaching.
• Pharmacies: A pharmacy in this context is a retail store, the main product of which is medications (usually both prescription and non-prescription), along with first aid and other similar products.
• Herbal Medicine: The businesses in this category are involved in a type of practice that involves indigenous herbalism and sometimes spirituality, typically involving diviners, midwives, and herbalists.
• Telemedicine: Businesses in this category provide medical advice or consultations over the internet.
• Medical Laboratories: Businesses in this category provide medical laboratory tests.

Hospitality

The hospitality industry is a broad sector of fields that includes lodging, food and drink service, event planning, and theme parks, and intersects with the transportation and travel industry. The business categories under the Hospitality industry include:

• Hotels: Hotels provide paid lodging on a short-term basis.
• Restaurants: Businesses in this category prepare and serve food and drinks to customers in exchange for money.

Leisure & Entertainment

This is the segment of businesses focused on recreation, entertainment, sports, and related products and services. The business categories under the Leisure & Entertainment industry include:

• Cinemas: This is an auditorium for viewing films for entertainment. Most cinemas are into commercial operations catering to the general public, who attend by purchasing a ticket.
• Nightclubs: A nightclub, music club, or club, is an entertainment venue and bar that usually operates late into the night.
• Events: This is a planned and organised activity, typically requiring an entry/registration fee.
• Press & Media: The press & media or news industry are forms of mass media that focus on delivering news and entertainment to the general public or a target public. These include print media, radio and television, as well as the internet (blogs, online newspapers e.t.c).
• Recreation Centres: These are buildings which are open to the public, where meetings are held, sports are played, and there are activities available for young and old people.
• Streaming Services: A streaming service is an on-demand online entertainment source for music, TV shows, movies and other streaming media.

Logistics

The logistics industry refers to businesses involved in the transportation, storage, handling, inventory, packaging and delivery of goods. The business categories under the Logistics industry include:

• Courier Services: These businesses are responsible for the delivery of packages, documents, and mail between two parties.
• Freight Services: This involves the physical process of transporting commodities, merchandise goods, and cargo. A company providing freight service typically acts as the middleman between their clients and the actual transportation company (shipping line/air freight) involved in the shipping.

Non-profits

These businesses include NGOs, membership organisations, political parties, government agencies and religious bodies. These organisations are set up to advocate a social cause and can operate in religious, scientific, research, or educational settings. The business categories under the Non-profits industry include:

• Professional Associations: These businesses seek to further a particular profession or the interests of individuals engaged in that profession and the public interest. These associations could also comprise a group of people in a learned occupation, entrusted with maintaining control or oversight of the legitimate practice of the field.
• Government Agencies: This is an organisation in the government that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions.
• NGOs: These are non-governmental organisations that are active in humanitarian or social areas. They are independent of government influence even though they may receive government funding.
• Political Parties: These are a voluntary and organised group of people who have the same ideology and political views. These groups field candidates for elections in an attempt to get them elected and implement the political party's agenda.
• Religious Organizations: Religious organizations involve communities of believers. However, these communities come in different forms including religious movements, denominations, sects, and cults.

Travel

This industry covers businesses involved in providing services related to moving from one location to another. Merchants in this industry include transportation businesses as well as travel and tourism-related services such as airlines, air ticketing services, car rentals and carpooling services, cruises, travel insurance, and package tours. The business categories under the Travel industry include:

• Airlines: Businesses in this category provide air transportation for passengers and freight. They're regulated by Aviation authorities.
• Ridesharing: Ridesharing is any means of transportation in which multiple people use the same vehicle to arrive at a similar destination. Ridesharing can include carpooling and sharing taxis, as well. Ride-hailing businesses (such as Uber) can also fall into this category.
• Tour Services: A Tour operator (not to be confused with a Travel Agency) typically combines tour and travel components to create holiday packages. There are basically 4 types of companies in this category - Inbound Tour Operators, Outbound Tour Operators, Domestic Tour Operators and Ground Operators.
• Transportation: This describes businesses that deal with the movement of people from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land (rail and road), water, cable, pipeline and space.
• Travel Agencies: These businesses sell transportation tickets, lodging, and admission to entertainment activities to both individuals and groups planning trips. They offer advice on destinations, plan trip itineraries, make travel arrangements for clients and also offer visa services.

Utilities

This industry covers all businesses that provide basic amenities and public services such as electricity, water, waste disposal, telecommunications, cable television, and internet services. The business categories under the Utility industry include:

• Cable Television: Cable TV operators offer a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted through coaxial cables or fibre-optic cables. They have a variety of packages of broadcast (i.e. over-the-air) channels and satellite-delivered channels.
• Electricity: This category covers companies that deal with the generation, transmission, distribution and sale of electric power to the general public and industries.
• Garbage Disposal: These companies carry out activities and actions required to manage waste from its inception to its final disposal. This includes the collection, transport, treatment and disposal of waste, together with monitoring and regulation of the waste management process.
• Internet: These are mainly internet service providers (ISP) that provide services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. The services typically provided by ISPs include Internet access, Internet transit, domain name registration, web hosting, and Usenet service.
• Telecoms: Telecommunications is made up of all companies that play a role in the advancement of mobile communications. Telecom is about voice, text (messaging, email), and high-speed internet access.
• Water: Water utility management companies install, operate, and maintain community water and wastewater systems in a region. These companies are fully licensed and regulated by the State Government.