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Paga, one of Nigeria’s leading financial technology (Fintech) companies has announced a new userbase milestone. The company now have more than 8 million customers that are using its platform for mobile money transactions.
According to the company’s founder and CEO, Tayo Oviosu, while it took Paga 989 days to achieve one million users, it took only 174 days to go from 7 to 8 million people.
“We are working hard to make it easy to send money to anyone and get access to financial services,” he tweeted on Sunday, 18 March 2018.
The company’s services include ability to send as N500 to N1 million to anyone, anywhere in the country using their phone number, electricity bills payment, airtime recharge, bank deposits, and shopping with their Paga account. Customers can also make money for themselves when they become Paga agents. The company recently announced that it was in partnership with the Rural Electrification Agency in its initiative to provide clean and sustainable energy to 12,000 shops in Sabon Gari Market in Kano.
Aside from offering a diverse portfolio of payment solutions, Paga’s journey to eight million userbase is seen as significant for the Nigerian Fintech space for many reasons.
First it signifies how far the industry has come and the potential for businesses in the space.
Tayo Oviosu and co-founder, Jay Alabraba, established the company in 2009, a period when little was known about mobile money and its relevance for ordinary Nigerians, even M-Pesa, Africa’s most successful mobile money product, was barely two years at the time.
Although from the beginning, Paga was clear about its vision of being at the forefront of Nigeria’s financial inclusion drive and seem focused on it; customers’ insistence on cash transaction has been very pervasive.
Cash is still loved by many people today; about 70 percent of Nigerians are yet to do away with their preference for paying in cash.
With players like Paga making significant inroads on the e-economy map, it is probably a matter of time before the cashless population overtakes the cash population.
In 2017, when it reached 1 million, Oviosu assured that “We will not rest until the day when any Nigerian wants to pay for anything or gives someone money and the first solution is “Just Page it”.
An eight million users milestone is not an ordinary feat as it trumps the customer base of many established Tier I commercial banks.
Importantly, Paga’s achievement is a reminder that the mobile money potential in Nigeria is real and should be taken seriously by every financial services firm, the investment community and government. Hence, it reinforces the point that it is going to take collaboration for any fintech service to hit the big times.
