In early 2023, in a bustling corner of Lagos Island, inside the tech command center of Remita, a quiet milestone was achieved – one that would reshape Nigeria’s financial transaction landscape. The company successfully processed its first-ever upload of one million bulk transactions through its web platform, a technical feat that placed it among Africa’s elite in payment infrastructure capability. At the heart of this accomplishment was Paschaline Ugwo, a Product Manager whose foresight and coordination played a pivotal role in making history.
For most Nigerians, processing a million salaries, vendor payments, and dividends in one seamless digital transaction sounds abstract. However, such a feature is essential in industries, governments, and financial institutions where bulk disbursements are routine. Before this achievement, batch uploads were capped due to limitations in scalability, backend latency, and integration with interbank systems. “We were routinely fielding requests from corporate clients who needed to process massive disbursements but couldn’t do so in a single file,” said Ugwo. “We knew we had to re-engineer the entire experience technically and from a user flow perspective.”
The result was an overhaul of Remita’s file ingestion system, database architecture, and error handling protocols. Engineers optimized concurrency protocols, while Ugwo worked closely with clients to understand pain points and iterate on UI improvements. “Paschaline wasn’t just shipping features – she was deeply embedded in the client experience,” said Seyi Adebanjo, a former engineering lead on the project. “Her sense of empathy for both our internal teams and end users made a tangible difference.”
Industry experts have since pointed to this milestone as a symbol of Nigerian fintech’s coming of age. “Handling one million bulk uploads in a single web session requires robust throughput and fault tolerance. It’s not just about transactions – it’s about confidence,” remarked Dr. Uche Nnaji, a payments infrastructure consultant. “What Remita has done, with Paschaline’s leadership on product strategy, shows that homegrown solutions can meet and even exceed global standards.”
The use cases have been varied and immediate. Several commercial banks have adopted the feature for internal disbursements, while government ministries now process pension and grant payments through the system. In one instance, a state-owned enterprise used the feature to pay hundreds of thousands of subsidy reimbursements in under an hour – an operation that previously took days.
Paschaline herself is measured in her reflections. “For us, it wasn’t about chasing a number. It was about eliminating friction for institutions that need reliability at scale,” she said. “When you handle people’s salaries and entitlements, any failure is more than technical – it’s deeply human.”
Colleagues describe her as methodical and data-obsessed, often pushing for testing scenarios others overlook. But they also highlight her unique ability to translate user stories in a technical direction. “She sits at the intersection of people, process, and platforms,” said a Remita executive. “That’s where great product managers live.”
In an ecosystem hungry for transformation, Paschaline Ugwo has once again demonstrated that progress is not always loud – it often arrives through resilience, iteration, and a deep understanding of both problem and purpose. In this case, it came as one million transactions, humming silently through Nigeria’s digital rails
