Paga to further accelerate growth with $10m series B2 investment

Paga has announced that it has closed a $10 million growth financing led by the Global Innovation Fund.Also participating in the round were existing investors Goodwell (managed by Alitheia Capital), Adlevo Capital, Omidyar Network and Unreasonable Capital. This new financing brings the total Paga has raised since inception in 2009 to $35 million.

The company recently revealed that since August 2012 it has served 9 million customers and created over 10,000 jobs through its 17,000 agents who hire staff to run their stores.

“GIF is proud to lead Paga’s Series B2 round,” said Alix Peterson Zwane, GIF’s CEO. “Paga’s mission of helping people ‘make life possible” aligns 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.”

Nigeria currently has a population of 186 million but is expected to become the third largest country in the world (behind India and China) by 2050 with 411 million people. In Nigeria today, over 100 million adults find it difficult to transfer or leverage money for basic human needs.

This problem is one that exists even for those that are banked, and is something Paga’s team is passionate about solving.The growth financing announced today will enable Paga further scale its business in Nigeria to drive the growth of Paga’s mobile wallet and agent network, and explore expansion opportunities in other markets where similar problems exist.

“Our belief in Paga as an effective platform to drive financial inclusion is unwavering,” says ‘Tokunboh Ishmael, Managing Partner at Alitheia Capital, “Paga has shown solid progress, and alongside other investments in our portfolio has played a huge role in our ability to demonstrate that enabling access to essential services for the broad population has both significant financial and developmental impact.”

Paga’s massive transformative purpose is “To make it simple for one billion people to access and use money.” With a nationwide network of 17,000 agents and more than 9 million users accessing funds in Nigeria, Paga is making strides by enabling efficient digital payments and building successful societies.

This has translated to over 57 million transactions processed worth approximately $3.6 billion, a business that is profitable and growing at 110% compounded annual growth rate (2016-2018).