Fulfilling our purpose at Paga
Yesterday I wrote an email to the Paga team reflecting on 2017 and sharing my views of what 2018 has in store for us. In the email I said:
We are entering into the fulfilment of our purpose as a business to offer payments and financial services to the mass market.
Our goal at Paga is to make life possible for all Nigerians by solving two key problems 1) make it easy to pay and get paid and 2) make financial services accessible to all Nigerians. When I started the business in 2009 I had a very a clear view that for Nigeria to become the Giant of Africa again we had to solve these two key problems (amongst several others). 2018 is the year Paga enters into the full view of that purpose.
We have focused on solving payments and we have made great strides in that endeavour with 2017 being a fantastic year for us! Below are some of our key milestones in 2017:
- We have built out the largest distribution network for financial services in Nigeria (13,720 agents) — places where people can go in any community and make payments or access financial services — to reach the mass market.
- We have layered on a robust enterprise grade platform that can hold any type of financial product and any currency.
- We have built a business with 200 staff (and growing) and achieved profitability in Q2 2017, ahead of schedule, and in a sustainable way.
Most importantly, we are honoured that over 7.5 million Nigerians have used Paga and we are now processing on average 110 transactions a minute, compared to 7 transactions a minute in our first full year, 2012*. In 2017 we processed ~14m transactions worth ~N300b (90% y/y). It is not always hitch free, but we work tirelessly and continuously to improve our service quality and resolve any issues that arise.
We are proud of our achievements…from our wide network of partners to our broad-based revenues, but we view these milestones as just the beginning of charting our vision towards making life possible for all Nigerians. We’ve only scratched the surface of the large, ever-growing Nigerian marketplace, and continue to innovate by piloting new services for savings, lending etc, and honing our expertise on the Nigerian market through top-class research and on the ground knowledge. In 2018, we’ll debut a range of new products that are logical extensions of this ecosystem, and set out to meet our mission, the purpose that drives what we do, in even more ways.
In 2018 we are expanding our business to offer a range of digital financial services, starting with savings, to the mass market through our agent network and self-use channels (*242#, www.mypaga.com, mobile apps). We are also going to double down on mobile money transfers with a goal of democratising access and reach — we want to make sending and receiving money in Nigeria to be as easy as making a phone call!
As we get closer to launching these new services I’ll share more, but needless to say, I’m very excited about 2018 and fulfilling our purpose at Paga!
I wish you the very best in 2018!
*These hours are based on standard agent working hours in a year Monday — Friday.
