Paga celebrates 10 years of mobile payment

Mobile money company, Paga, clocks 10 years in business since being founded in 2009 and officially opened its doors for commercial operations in 2012.

This April marks 10 years since Tayo Oviosu, Paga’s founder and CEO, embarked on the Paga journey.

“I started Paga with one goal: To solve the “use of cash” problem — Cash is still king around the world — and that needs to change. Cash is very expensive to clean, manage, and store. In high-risk countries like Nigeria, carrying sums of cash around poses a security risk.

“Storing money digitally and transacting digitally significantly reduces friction, transaction costs, convenience, and improves livelihoods.

Our first market has been Nigeria, a country of over 200 million people with over 90% of transactions done in cash,” He explained.

“Though the company started in April 2009, we took our services to market in August 2012. It took us 25 months to get our license from the Central Bank of Nigeria, and then another 7 months to close our Series A financing.”

A lot has happened since then: The trailblazing team of 4 has grown to a team 460 and counting. Paga has served over 12 million customers and processed over 72 million transactions worth $4.6 billion.

The company has also raised $34.7 million since its inception, attracting investors such as Tim Draper, one of the earliest internet investors, Flourish, a venture of the Omidyar Group, and the Global Innovation Fund, amongst others.

Since its commercial launch in August 2012, Paga has developed into a sophisticated omnichannel payments platform offering users a safe and convenient way to send and receive money, and pay their bills.

Customers are able to use Paga on any mobile phone by dialing *242# on any network, Paga’s mobile app or website, or through any Paga agent. The innovative wallet allows users to link multiple bank cards and also fund the wallet directly in order to access funds from one world-class secure location.