Paga, a leading mobile payment company that is synonymous with payments in Nigeria has raised $13 million in its Series B financing. The Series B financing was led by Adlevo Capital and other institutional investors such as Omidyar Network, Goodwell West Africa, Acumen Fund, Capricon Investment Group. Joining the impressive list of individual investors are Jeremy Stoppelman, co-Founder and CEO of Yelp, Tim Draper of Draper Fisher and Jurvetson and one of the early team members at PayPal.
Paga received investing funds from these investors in a series A round but the total sum of the investment was not disclosed. So it is hard to tell how much Paga has raised in total or what their valuation might be.
Folabi Esan, Managing Partner at Adlevo Capital said on their investment, “We are very excited about Paga. When Adlevo first invested in Paga in 2012, the company had processed only about 270,000 transactions totaling just over $15 million in value. The company has experienced an impressive compounded annual growth rate of about 150% since Adlevo invested – today, having processed over 17 million transactions worth over a billion dollars. Paga’s sustained leading position in a competitive market is a testament to the strength of the team – and I think there’s even more to come as they unlock other areas of the business. I’m confident in Paga’s ability to drive growth of their sector in the coming years and continue to have a significant positive impact on the Nigerian economy.”
Tayo Oviosu, founder and CEO of Paga said, “Our recent financing will help us continue to build towards our vision and support the strengthening of our agent network. Of course, we must continue to innovate on our payment offerings for small and medium enterprises and consumers. In addition, through our agent network today, we already offer more physical service points than all the bank branches in Nigeria put together, so we are actively working on partnerships with banks to offer our agent network for use by their customers.
“Effectively, Paga agents will act as human ATMs and bring significant convenience to customers of the banks who need to deposit or withdraw cash from their bank accounts without traveling far or waiting in long lines. This will support the banks in achieving their critical goal of truly reaching the mass market.”
With its suite of products for SMEs, Paga is very popular with merchants looking to sell their goods and services online and collect debit card or mobile money payments securely.
Paga offers its services through a network of over 8,850 agents across Nigeria, its website (www.mypaga.com), a mobile application (Paga for Android), and its online payment gateway which is free for any business to integrate and collect payments via Paga accounts or any debit card.
Source: Techcabal.com
