Selar and Paystack are two popular platforms for selling digital products online. While both platforms offer similar services, there are still key differences that make them appeal to various businesses.

Selar is an e-commerce platform that allows you to sell all kinds of digital products and accept payment from anyone anywhere in the world. Paystack, on the other hand, is a payment gateway that offers streamlined payment processes and also allows you to see digital products online.

In this Paystack vs Selar article, we highlight the key features of these platforms and what makes them stand out for each creator.

What is Selar?

Selar is an e-commerce platform designed for African creators to help them turn their knowledge into income by selling digital products or services anywhere in the world.

Selar was created for the African creator to provide a sustainable plan through which they can create endless streams of income for themselves and be rewarded for their knowledge and skills.

Today, over 70K African creators and 400k users trust Selar to help them sell their digital products across borders and thrive in the creator economy.

At Selar, we believe in equipping the African creator with all the resources needed to compete on a global stage and get paid for it.

How does Selar work?

Selar is an easy platform to use such that you can sign up, create a store, and start selling your product in 5 minutes or less.

You can get started on Selar in just four steps

• Sign up @ Selar.co
• Enter your bank information to enable payout when you make sales.
• Upload products
• Share store link with your customers.

Selar’s goal is to help you sell your digital products seamlessly across borders as an African. So you don’t need to travel around the world, have professional sales experience, or be an influencer to sell on Selar.

Selar functions as a free e-commerce store builder with payment integration. This means that when you create an online store with Selar, you automatically get an online payment integration that supports local and international payments, making it the ideal choice for the African creator.

What is Paystack?

Paystack is a fintech company that provides an online payment gateway for African merchants.

It enables merchants to securely accept payments from customers via multiple channels such as debit/credit cards, bank transfers, mobile money, and USSD. The platform also allows business owners to sell both physical and digital products online.

Paystack’s mission is to make it easy for businesses to sell and collect payments from their customers and help drive financial inclusion in Africa. Its user-friendly interface and secure payment processing capabilities have made it a popular choice among businesses of all sizes in Nigeria and beyond.

How does Paystack work?

Paystack enables you to sell your physical and digital products online and accept payments from your customers using different payment channels such as cards, mobile money accounts, QR codes, bank transfers, or USSD.

When you sign up on Paystack, you are required to choose what type of business you own and enter your details to update your profile.

Signing up on Paystack is also easy. All you have to do is;

• Visit Paystack commerce
• Enter your required details to complete compliance.
• Create a storefront where you can sell all your products from one page.
• Upload your products
• Share store link with your customers.

When a customer wants to pay for your product, they are directed to Paystack’s secure payment page where they can enter their payment details.

Once the payment is complete, Paystack processes the transaction and passes the funds to your online wallet.

Overall, Paystack simplifies the payment process for both merchants and customers, making it easier for you to collect payments and for customers to make purchases with confidence.

Selar vs Paystack: Who is it for?

Selar is an eCommerce platform that allows African creators and entrepreneurs to sell their content, products, and services across borders without stress.

Paystack is an online payment gateway that makes it easy for merchants to accept credit and debit card payments online from users or customers. However, it also offers a commerce solution for businesses to sell their products and services.

Because Selar is creator-focused, its merchants are mostly digital entrepreneurs, creators, coaches, authors, and digital marketing experts.

Paystack’s merchants are mostly entrepreneurs with physical and online businesses because it primarily offers financial services.

Selar vs Paystack: Features

Both Selar and Paystack have different features and functionalities that make them appeal to various audiences.

Here’s a comparison of key features you need to make a decision.

1. Online store

Both Selar and Paystack offer a free online storefront where you can sell all forms of digital products. Paystack storefront is designed to help merchants create a simple and beautiful page where they can sell all kinds of things.

Before your store is live, you’ll have to complete 4-steps of compliance requirements to receive payments. This is to enable Paystack to see you as a legit business/owner. Without completing compliance requirements, your storefront will be in test mode and you won’t be able to sell your products.

When compliance and KYC are done and verified, you can now set up your online store and have your products displayed on your store.

Conversely, you may choose to not create a storefront. In that case, you can upload your product and have a link for each of your products.

Selar, on the other hand, offers you an all-inclusive online store as soon as you sign up. So you don’t have to worry about creating a storefront to sell your products. Once you signup, you have an online store where your products are automatically displayed as you upload them.

2. Page builder

As a creator, owning an online store isn’t the only way to promote your products. You need high-performing landing/sales pages to boost the promotion of your products and increase sales.

This is where Selar is the ideal option for you, as you can use the page builder feature to create a sales page for your products.

Selar provides a drag-and-drop page builder feature that makes it easy to create a landing page in minutes without the need for a developer. You can not only build landing pages for your products, but you can also build other pages such as a sales page, policy page, terms, and condition page, and more.

Plus you have the freedom to customize these pages to give them the unique look and feel of your brand. Use your logo and brand colors on the page to make them look exactly how you want them to look.

3. Payment system

Both Selar and Paystack offer a seamless method to receive payments from your customers. Paystack acts as a payment gateway that helps you to receive money from clients across the country.

Even better, you can create a payment page for receiving payments from customers. You can integrate Paystack into your sales page, website, blog, and, every other product sales point to receive payments from anyone anywhere.

Selar, on the other hand, is not a payment gateway, but it has integrated with other payment gateways such as Flutterwave and Paystack to process payments for you, helping you receive payments from anyone anywhere in the world.

3. Affiliate network

Selar has an Affiliate network feature that helps you to leverage affiliates to promote your products and, for affiliates to make more money promoting other people’s products.

Merchants can apply for their products to be listed on the marketplace where affiliates can then promote their products. Since Affiliate marketing generates 5% to 25% of online sales for big brands, it’s an effective strategy for creators to sell their products.

Paystack, offers no affiliate marketing feature, as it is primarily a payment gateway, and to help merchants sell their products and collect payments, not a creator-focused platform.

4. Integrations

You can integrate Paystack as a payment gateway into your websites, blog, sales page, or landing page.

But Selar provides a robust suite of integration for digital creators. You can integrate all the favorite tools you need as a creator to ensure the smooth operation of your business.

You can embed your Selar store into a website, and integrate with other tools such as Facebook Pixel, Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Sendpulse, MailerLite, LearnDash, Zapier, and more.

With these integrations, you can manage all the affairs of your business from one robust dashboard – your Selar dashboard.

5. Transaction charges

Selar charges a transaction fee for every successful sale which varies by the currency of the sale. Processing fees start as low as 4% for NGN transactions to as high as 10% for USD and GHS transactions. You can find a list of processing fees here.

Paystack, on the other hand, charges 1.5% plus an additional ₦100 for local transactions. For every international transaction, you will be charged 3.9% of the payment plus an additional ₦100 for Nigerians.

For Ghanaians, PayStack charges 1.95% + GHS0 for both local and international transactions. Lastly, for South Africa, Paystack charges 2.9%+ ZAR1 for both local and international transactions, excluding VAT.

6. Course creation

Paystack allows you to sell other digital products like ebooks, worksheets, and templates, and accept payments from all around the world. But you cannot host your online courses on Paystack.

Selar, on the other hand, allows you to host your online course, create modules, drip your course content, and even offer course certificates on completion to your students.

Not only that, but you can also host other forms of digital products and still get paid within the same platform. So you don’t need an external tool.

7. Email marketing

When comparing email marketing between Selar and Paystack, Selar gives you more functionality that saves you the cost of paying for a separate email marketing tool.

You can send multiple emails, segment your audience, and market to your customers.

The best part about Selar’s email marketing feature is the “Abandoned Cart email” where automatic emails are sent to customers who do not complete their transactions in your store.

For example, if a customer just adds your product to his/her cart without checking out, Selar immediately sends an automatic email to the customer reminding them of pending transactions, while you get a copy of the customer’s details to try to reach out to them manually.

However, Paystack doesn’t offer this feature hence, there is no method of retaining your customers as a creator.

8. Multicurrency payments

On Selar, you can sell in any currency and have the amount converted into your country’s default currency and credited to you.

This means you can sell in any currency and have your money converted to your local currency through our favorable FX rates. Selar supports eight currencies [NGN, USD, GHS, ZAR, KES, TZS, GBP]today with more coming.

You can even get your USD and GBP payments in your USD and GBP accounts. However, this is currently supported for PayPal, US, and UK bank accounts.

Also, Selar detects your store visitor’s location and shows them the right currency for them. e.g If someone in the US visits your store, they see your product price in USD first, before other currencies.

Paystack, on the other hand, doesn’t offer multicurrency payments. Your product price is automatically set to the Nigerian Naira. Your customers can only pay you in Naira and your funds can only be paid to your bank account in Naira.

9. Store setup

Selar vs Paysack: Similarities

Although there are differences between these two platforms, they still have some things in common. 

The similarities between Paystack and Selar are as follows;

• They are both payment gateway platforms. You can get paid for your service anywhere as an African Creator using either platform.
• On both platforms, your customers can be redirected to an external platform after payment is confirmed.
• Buyers can know more about your products on these platforms before purchasing.
• You have access to your customers’ records e.g name, Phone Number, Email Address, etc after purchase.
• There are charge fees on every transaction made in your store.
• Both platforms send your money automatically into your designated bank account within 24 hours of payment.

Selar vs Paystack: Pros and Cons

While Selar and Paystack have proven to be reliable platforms for creators to sell their knowledge, they still have individual pros and cons.

Pros

Selar	Paystack
Upsell and cross-sell features	Fraud protection.
Easy to use page builder with thousands of templates to use without the need for a developer.	Easy-to-use interface.
Course certificates on completion of online courses.	Simple and easy payment system for Africans.
A straightforward affiliate marketing system	Inventory management
Built for the African creator	Manage shipping
Easy-to-use interface	Supports physical product businesses.
Pre-launch product methods	Push notifications for new orders.

Cons

Selar	Paystack
Doesn’t support cryptocurrency payment.	Isn’t suitable for other forms of digital products apart from ebooks.
No live chat or support community although you can reach out to the Selar team for any questions.	No upsell or cross-sell features
No license key for software products.	Poor email marketing structure
Isn’t focused on physical products or inventory management.	Isn’t built as an e-commerce platform for creators
	No customer purchase insights.

Selar vs Paystack: Which one should you use?

Both Selar and Paystack are good platforms for selling digital products online. Paystack has its strengths. It helps you sell both physical and digital products so you can market to anyone, manage inventories, and receive payment from anywhere.

But if you want to take ownership of your creativity, sell different kinds of digital products, manage all forms of marketing, and receive payments from anywhere within one platform, then Selar is the best option for you.

No more struggling with payment methods, looking for how to market your product, low FX rates, paying for lots of tools, or looking for the ideal plug-in. Selar gives you a seamless, fully integrated suite of resources vital for growing your business.

So whether you’re just starting out, or looking for a solution that takes out the stress part of managing an online business, Selar is the one for you.

Start today by creating a free account and see how easy it can be to manage a business and make money online.