The Paystack MCP Server: What It Is and How to Use It

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that lets AI assistants use tools provided by external servers. The architecture has three parts:

• MCP host — the AI assistant (Claude Code, Claude API, another MCP client)
• MCP server — a process you run that exposes tools. For Paystack, this server holds your secret key and makes API calls
• Tools — named operations the AI can call. The AI sees tool names and descriptions; the server executes them

The security model: the AI calls tools by name with parameters. The MCP server validates the call, uses the secret key from its environment, makes the Paystack API request, and returns the result. The AI never sees the key — only the result.

What a Paystack MCP server exposes:

Tool Name	Paystack Endpoint	Use Case
list_transactions	GET /transaction	"Show my last 20 transactions"
get_transaction	GET /transaction/:id	"Get details of transaction 12345"
verify_payment	GET /transaction/verify/:ref	"Verify payment with reference PAY_abc123"
list_customers	GET /customer	"How many customers do I have?"
create_payment_link	POST /paymentrequest	"Create a NGN 5,000 payment link for consulting"
get_balance	GET /balance	"What is my current Paystack balance?"

// Simple Paystack MCP server in Node.js
// Install: npm install @modelcontextprotocol/sdk

import { Server } from '@modelcontextprotocol/sdk/server/index.js';
import { StdioServerTransport } from '@modelcontextprotocol/sdk/server/stdio.js';
import { CallToolRequestSchema, ListToolsRequestSchema } from '@modelcontextprotocol/sdk/types.js';

var PAYSTACK_BASE = 'https://api.paystack.co';
var headers = () => ({ Authorization: 'Bearer ' + process.env.PAYSTACK_SECRET_KEY });

var server = new Server({ name: 'paystack', version: '1.0.0' }, { capabilities: { tools: {} } });

server.setRequestHandler(ListToolsRequestSchema, async () => ({
  tools: [
    {
      name: 'list_transactions',
      description: 'List Paystack transactions with optional status and date filters.',
      inputSchema: { type: 'object', properties: { perPage: { type: 'number' }, status: { type: 'string' }, from: { type: 'string' }, to: { type: 'string' } } },
    },
    {
      name: 'verify_payment',
      description: 'Verify a Paystack payment by reference.',
      inputSchema: { type: 'object', properties: { reference: { type: 'string' } }, required: ['reference'] },
    },
    {
      name: 'get_balance',
      description: 'Get the current Paystack account balance.',
      inputSchema: { type: 'object', properties: {} },
    },
  ],
}));

server.setRequestHandler(CallToolRequestSchema, async (req) => {
  var args = req.params.arguments || {};
  try {
    if (req.params.name === 'list_transactions') {
      var p = new URLSearchParams(args).toString();
      var res = await fetch(PAYSTACK_BASE + '/transaction?' + p, { headers: headers() });
      var data = await res.json();
      return { content: [{ type: 'text', text: JSON.stringify(data.data, null, 2) }] };
    }
    if (req.params.name === 'verify_payment') {
      var res = await fetch(PAYSTACK_BASE + '/transaction/verify/' + args.reference, { headers: headers() });
      var data = await res.json();
      return { content: [{ type: 'text', text: JSON.stringify(data.data, null, 2) }] };
    }
    if (req.params.name === 'get_balance') {
      var res = await fetch(PAYSTACK_BASE + '/balance', { headers: headers() });
      var data = await res.json();
      return { content: [{ type: 'text', text: JSON.stringify(data.data, null, 2) }] };
    }
  } catch (err) {
    return { content: [{ type: 'text', text: 'Error: ' + err.message }], isError: true };
  }
});

var transport = new StdioServerTransport();
await server.connect(transport);

Add to Claude Code settings (~/.claude/settings.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "paystack": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/paystack-mcp-server/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "PAYSTACK_SECRET_KEY": "sk_test_your_key_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

See connecting the Paystack MCP server to Claude Code for configuration walkthrough.

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