Tayo Oviosu is the founder and CEO of Paga, the leading mobile payments company in Nigeria. Hear more about him on the GHOGH podcast.
Nine years ago I started Paga to make it easy for people to transfer and leverage money for basic everyday needs.
My reason was simple — I was frustrated carrying cash around with me. Why was it so difficult to send money to my friend who spotted me for lunch, or to my cook to make me some banga soup? Why did I need to leave my date at the restaurant and drive to 4 ATMs before I found one that worked? Or after patiently waiting on a long queue in the supermarket realize the POS doesn’t work! It just did not make sense to me!
At Paga, we are building an ecosystem that enables people to digitally send and receive money, and creating simple financial access for everyone. We do not seek to be the bank but rather to partner with banks and financial institutions in the markets we operate.
There is a long arc to solve the problems we are tackling — especially ending the reign of cash as king. 90% of all transactions in emerging markets are done in cash. Paga aims to change this statistic and we are taking a long view to doing so…and we are making strong progress in Nigeria, our first market.
I’m very excited today about the launch of the new Paga Money Transfer App in Nigeria! Our goal in building this app was to simplify the process of sending money and ensure that money always gets to the recipient — no questions asked — always.
Paramount for us was the user experience. To get it right we took a step back and removed all the clutter you find in a lot of apps. This app only does two things — send and request money.
Have you ever found yourself spending time trying to contact someone to get their account number just so you can pay them? Or looking for your account number to give someone? Spend time going through the tedious process of the numerous steps required to complete a payment? Well, no need to ever do that again! Simply pick the person you want to send money to, and do so easily— by phone number or email. The recipient will get a nice message with the single step they need to take to collect the money!
Don’t have money in your Paga wallet? No worries, link your debit cards or bank account directly and fund the transaction from your bank account…you now have one place to store all your cards and transact from any of your bank accounts.
I am one of those guys who never carries cash around, and friends have to spot me in the often-frequent situation of failed POS transactions. Then we both carry guilt — one person of owing money and the other not wanting to ask. No more! With the new Paga Money Transfer app you can now request money from anyone! The person gets a link to your JustPaga.me page where they can pay you with their Paga account, debit card, or direct bank debit.
The JustPaga.me link is also perfect for use on social commerce — Instagram, etc. You now have your link to collect payments, and all your customer needs is your phone number or email (chances are that is how they have contacted you in the first place) to pay the money owed.
There are so many use cases for the Justpaga.me pages — small online businesses, wedding aso ebi payments, residents association dues, donate to my school fees…I can’t wait to see the creative ways people use Justpaga.me. While you are here feel free to send me some money here 🙂
Snap! I almost forgot to say all of this is free. Absolutely free to send and receive money and Paga to Paga is 100% guaranteed to always work!
While our goal is to simplify money transfers and stop the reign of cash as king, we know sometimes you’ll need to get cash. So we have made it extremely convenient to withdraw money from your Paga wallet. You can transfer to your linked bank account instantly for free anytime. Additionally, each month you get your first three withdrawals from a Paga agent for free. Finally, you can always withdraw, without a card, at any ATM of 13 banks!
You can download the new Paga Money Transfer app from the iOS App Storeor Android Play Store.
Editor’s note: Paga’s partner coverage includes the following countries: USA, UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and Senegal. International remittance partners include Western Union, Moneytrans, Terra, MoneyGlobe, MFS Africa, FGC, USA Concierge.
This article was originally published on Medium. It is reposted here with the permission of the author, Tayo Oviosu.
