Nigeria's Paga acquires Ethiopian software firm, Apposit for global expansion.
Paga, an aggressive Nigerian fintech startup acquired Apposit, a US software company with primary operations in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Apposit builds software to power innovative and high impact businesses in Africa.
Apposit has been associated with Paga since having its engineering team dedicated to Paga since 2009. The team has been led by Eric Chijioke, Paga’s CTO (Chief Technology Officer).
After raising $10 million in 2018, Paga started exploring opportunities in markets other than Nigeria, which forms the pretext of its acquisition of Apposit.
Tayo Oviosu, Paga founder, says, “Last year we refined our mission and vision to birth our massive transformative purpose: to make it simple for one billion people to access and use money. Apposit has demonstrated strong alignment with our purpose and they have some of the very best engineers I have been privileged to work with, in over two decades in technology in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. I am very excited to have Apposit join the Paga team.”
Leading Paga Ethiopia will be Apposit co-founder and CEO Adam Abate. Speaking of Apposit’s acquisition by Paga, Adam says it is “a very natural progression in the close relationship” Apposit had with Paga over the past decade.
“We are excited to join forces with Paga at a time where Ethiopia embarks in earnest on its digital transformation. As one company we will solve the use of cash and bring access to finance to millions of people in Ethiopia and beyond. Our companies are strongly aligned in terms of values, culture, and purpose, and leveraging Paga’s vast experience and robust payments platform will position us for success,” Adam comments, adding they “look forward to strengthening Paga’s product team and continuing to build technology that will be used globally.”
As Apposit’s leadership gets absorbed into the leadership structure at Paga, Eric Chijoke is retained as CTO, Simon Solomon becomes lead systems architect, and Gideon Abate head of product innovation.
Now adding the 62-member team of Apposit to the rest of its staff, Paga will have over 530 under its wings. The acquisition adds Addis Ababa to the list of cities Paga is engaged in: Lagos, London and Mexico City.
Started to provide safe and convenient ways of making payments, Paga enables its Nigerian users to send money to any phone number for the receiver to redeem at a Paga agent or at an ATM via a cardless withdrawal. Customers can also use Paga to deposit money to bank accounts in Nigeria, pay their bills, or top-up mobile phone airtime.
Source/www.2merkato.com