P2P Money Transfers will fuel Paga’s next phase of growth

I was overwhelmed with the kudos yesterday on Paga hitting 5 million users — thanks to everyone for the kind words!! In my post about Paga’s journey to 5 million I said:

In the early days of Paga bill payments were our primary transaction set, in the last year we have seen money transfers leading the way and I think that will continue to drive our growth in the next 18 months.

A few people reached out to ask if I could share more information. In the spirit of sharing information on what is going on with payments in Nigeria I decided to do so. Since 2014 we have seen a steady rise in money transfer transactions on Paga — I posted two tweets that represented key points for me in the adoption of P2P transfers a) when money transfer became our #1 transaction by value (July 2015) and b) when money transfer became our #1 Net revenue (gross margins) service (April 2016).

I sometimes think of transactions in Paga as a sandwich. Deposits and withdrawals are the bread on top and the bread at the bottom respectively. Our three core transactions are “the yummy stuff” in the middle — money transfers, merchant payments or bill payments, and airtime. That is where we focus our energies. Here is a breakdown of our transactions as a percentage of total transactions. I’ve only focused on yummy stuff in the middle to make up 100% total.

These charts are a moment in time and I expect the mix to continue to fluctuate over time. However, it is awesome to see the growth in P2P money transfers. As the charts show, merchant payments or bill payments remain our top volume but by value money transfers are the largest set. This is explained by the fact that people transfer larger amounts. Most importantly, the charts show that our investment in a strong agent network is paying off — thus why we have opened it to all banks to use. We want them to leverage our agents to roll out financial services to the mass market. It also bodes well for driving more electronic transactions. These trends will continue especially as we build out our agent network further — currently 10,000 agents in 35 of 36 states with 3,000+ in Lagos. It is also important to note that merchant payments also continues to grow on Paga and we expect that to continue as we scale our merchant offerings. Our proposition is very strong to merchants because we offer a one-stop shop for reaching both online and offline customers including both banked and unbanked consumers.

What excites me about our work at Paga is that we are focused on helping others achieve their dreams and making life possible for millions. We want to help businesses pay and get paid. We want to help individuals pay and get paid. We do not care if you are banked or unbanked. We do not want to be the bank. We want to build an army of entrepreneurs who build strong businesses for themselves and bring financial services to their communities. If we are half as successful as I dream we would have played a critical role in ensuring Nigeria becomes the commerce powerhouse it really can be. Exciting times ahead!