With a $10 million round, Nigeria’s Paga plans global expansion

Paga, a Nigeria based mobile payment company, has announced a $10 million Series B2. The announcement was made by Tayo Oviosu, the company’s founder and CEO, to TechCrunch at the Disrupt San Francisco event that he is currently attending.

The company is looking to channel the funding towards global expansion with Ethiopia, Mexico, and the Philippines is on top of the radar. Additionally, they are looking to continue with product development.

“Paga will use the Series B2 to grow its core development team of 25 engineers across countries and continents,” wrote TechCrunch.

The round was led by Global Innovation Partners – which will take a board seat – with participation from Unreasonable Capital as well as existing investors; Goodwell Investments, Adlevo Capital and Omidyar Network.

Founded in 2009 by Tayo Oviosu (CEO) and Jay Alabraba (Director Business Development), Paga says that it has over 9 million customers and 17,000 agents across Nigeria.

This recent round brings Paga’s total amount of funding raised to date to at least $35 million.

In October 2015, the company closed a $15 Series B in a round led by Adlevo Capital, with participation from Goodwell Investments, Omidyar Network and Capricon Investment group.

This round signifies the importance of payments to the African continent. Given that in the past few weeks, three payments startups have raked in a combined total of $34 million. Paystack raised $8 million a week ago while South Africa’s Yoco announced today that it had raised $16 million from Partech.

Additionally, when you look at the list of startups that have raked in the highest amount in terms of deal size, they are still dominating.

SOURCE: DIGESTAFRICA