A Nigerian fintech company and also a licensed mobile money operator, Paga, says it has processed transactions worth N14 trillion in the last 15 years.
The founder and CEO of the company Mr Tayo Oviosu while addressing the newsmen in commemoration of the company’s 15th anniversary in Lagos said that 80% of the transactions have been recorded in the last five years and noted that company currently services over 23 million customers in addition to about 150 businesses using three lines of business cutting across customer payment services, provision of payment infrastructure platform for other fintech operators and doroki services.
The figure from Paga confirmed that the rise in mobile money transactions in the country and recent data released by the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement Systems (NIBSS) revealed that mobile money operators in the country, including Paga, Opay, and Palmpay, among others, processed transactions worth N17.2 trillion between January and March this year.
“We have been around for 15 years, but there’s a huge growth and acceleration and our transactions have grown more than when we celebrated 10 years.” Ovisu said ..
Mr Oviosu listed job creation as the company’s milestone achievements in the last fifteen years as the company was able to empower several people by creating 1,000 direct jobs and over 100,000 indirect jobs through its agents spread across the country.
He noted that the company has expanded beyond the agent network to providing infrastructure for others through platform-as-a-service and serving 150 businesses. On the consumer side of the business.
The Paga CEO said the firm was excited that millions of customers across Nigeria are enjoying financial freedom through its services even as it targets expanding access to financial services for over 1 billion users across the globe.
“Between 10 years and now, we have grown our transaction value seven times more and volume five times.”
According to him, Paga started from the scratch and with no structure, but now operates platform as a service and serves over 250 businesses.
Oviosu said that Paga would continue to build an ecosystem that enables people to digitally send, receive money and access financial services.
“Our first market has been Nigeria, a country of over 200 million people with over 90 per cent of transactions done in cash.
“Though the company started in April 2009, we took our services to market in August 2012. It took us 25 months to get our licence from the Central Bank of Nigeria, and then another seven months to close our series A financing.
“We started just as an agent network, but now we operate three lines of business which includes consumer business with 23 million users, retail business and infrastructure which services businesses.”