Financial solutions outfit, Paga, has hit 5 million users, claims its founder Tayo Oviosu. He could not suppress his joy as he reminisced on the journey of the company spanning over 7 years. Recalling the tough start, Oviosu said ‘First it took us 13 months to get our license — got it in November 2011.
“Without a license, only one VC (Alitheia Capital/Goodwell) was willing to bet on us…we had money to keep building but we really couldn’t push the business in any strong way. Armed with the license we went out to raise money and closed our Series A in June of 2012 — money in the bank in August of 2012. So, technically, we really started our major push of Paga in September of 2012. At the time of the fund raising we had 125,000 users. Now, 5 million! Major kudos to our team and our agents who work tirelessly towards our mission.”
He went on to thank the 10,000 women and men who make up the shared agent network that propel the company’s business. ‘I love our agents and always enjoy going out to the field and meeting them — they are making a difference in their communities and building valuable businesses for themselves’.
Speaking on the company’s plans for the future, Oviosu said ‘We will launch a major upgrade to Paga’s consumer offerings. Soon after, a major upgrade to our online payment gateway. Our goal, as a full service payments business, is to solve the payment needs for all sizes of merchants (without competing with them), and making it easy for consumers to send money to other people or pay for goods and services.’
Paga became licensed in November 2011 and has processed over US$800m between July 2015 and July 2016 only. It currently boasts of over 900,000 active users, making it one of Nigeria’s largest financial solutions companies.
