Nigerian fintech start-up, Paga is moving into the global market as they secured $10 million funding led by the Global Innovation Fund. Also part of the investors were, Goodwell, Adlevo Capital, Omidyar Network and Unreasonable Capital. The new fund brings paga’s total fund to $35 million since established in 2009.
The company has served 9 million customers and created over 10,000 jobs through its 17,000 agents who hire staff to run their stores since it commenced operations in August 2012.
Alix Peterson Zwane, Global Innovation Fund CEO, said ‘’GIF is proud to lead Paga’s Series B2 round…. Paga’s mission of helping people ‘make life possible which is align with our core mission of supporting entrepreneurs and innovators that seek to improve the lives of those living on less than $5 per day. I am pleased that GIF will help enable Paga’s next phase,” he added.
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The company is planning to launch its payments product in Ethiopia, Mexico, and the Philippines, CEO Tayo Oviosu told TechCrunch.
According to Oviosu, Paga looks to go head to head with regional and global payment players, like PayPal, Alipay, and Safaricom’s M-Pesa. “We are not only in a position to compete with them, we’re going beyond them,” he said of Kenya’s M-Pesa mobile money product. “Our goal is to build a global payment ecosystem across many emerging markets.”
Paga has built out considerable scale in home market; Nigeria which boasts the dual distinction as Africa’s most populous nation and largest economy. The start-up has processed 57 million transactions worth $3.6 billion.