in_pursuit_of

Dear @stripe I've been in tech for nearly a decade now. I wrote my first line of code on a computer in 2017; before that, I was writing it on paper, and since then I've spent a lot of time around builders here in Zimbabwe, in classrooms, at meetups, in late-night WhatsApp groups, on teams shipping software to the rest of the world. In all that time, one problem has come up more than any other. It isn't talent, and it isn't ambition. It's money, or more precisely, how money moves. We don't have proper access to payment gateways. No @stripe. No @paystack. And when you can't get paid, you can't build a business. You can only build a project. Every year our universities and colleges produce thousands of graduates who want to solve real problems, in health, agriculture, finance, logistics, government, you name it. Some of the most important problems in this country are going to be solved by them. But a product without a way for money to flow through it isn't a startup. It's a demo. AI has made this gap even more painful. A developer in Bulawayo or Harare with a laptop and good tools can now build in weeks what used to take a team months. More people than ever are able to start companies here. Then they reach the checkout page and stop. What do we do instead? The lucky few register companies abroad, open foreign bank accounts, and jump through expensive hoops just to accept a card payment. Everyone else relies on workarounds, a friend's account in another country, informal transfers, "just send it via..." None of that is good for founders, for customers, or for compliance. And the old reasons for keeping Zimbabwe out are weaker than ever. The US sanctions program on Zimbabwe ended in 2024. We came off the FATF grey list in 2022. Stripe Tax already lists Zimbabwe as a supported country. Some of the groundwork exists. Payments still don't. We have a real tech ecosystem here. We have the talent. We have people who keep building through power cuts, currency changes and every other obstacle this country throws at them. What we don't have is the infrastructure to build end to end. So here's my ask, respectfully and directly. @stripe @paystack, is Zimbabwe on your roadmap? If not, what exactly is in the way? And would you consider an invite-only pilot for vetted Zimbabwean businesses receiving USD payments? I'll personally help put together the first group of companies. And to every Zimbabwean founder and developer reading this, reply or quote with what you're building and what you'd ship if payments weren't the problem. Let's show them the demand is real. @patrickc @collision