#30: Paga - How one of Nigeria’s earliest FinTech companies is providing financial services across emerging markets

Afrobility: Africa Tech and Business

Overview: Today, we’re going to talk about Paga, the fintech payments company. We'll discuss its founding, early history, growth, impact & end with our overall outlook. This episode was recorded on May 30, 2021.

Companies discussed: Paga, Safaricom (M-Pesa), bKash, GTBank, First Bank, Chipper Cash, MTN, Airtel, FairMoney, Flutterwave, Paystack, Interswitch (Quickteller) & OPay

Business concepts discussed: Unbanked population, Financial inclusion, Mobile money, Payment platforms, government regulation, global expansion & telco competition

Conversation highlights:

• (00:40) - What Paga does and why we’re talking about it
• (04:27) - Founder background, Paga founding
• (07:20) - Payments context at the time of Paga’s founding
• (19:40) - Fundraising - Seed, Series A, B, B2
• (24:30) - Expansion plans to Ethiopia, Mexico, Philippines
• (26:30) - Product strategy and features
• (40:50) - Monetization and user growth over time
• (50:46) - Olumide’s overall thoughts and outlook
• (58:13) - Bankole’s overall thoughts and outlook
• (1:09:00) - Recommendation and small wins
  

Olumide’s recommendations, small wins & open questions:

• Recommendations: Countdown to retirement (part 1, part 2 and part 3), LinkedIn Feed Blocker & Twitter Timeline eradicator
• Small win: Didier Drogba's message to Chelsea before 2021 CL & Kai Havertz response after winning CL
  

Bankole’s recommendations, small wins & open questions:

• Recommendation: Eni Duro - Olamide, 0809ja for life - Etisalat advert & Correct models are bad
• Small win: CHELSEA FC ARE CHAMPIONS OF EUROPE! Big win!
  

We’d love to hear from you. Please email [e-mail] to share feedback or propose topics you’d like to hear.

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