Paga, Nigeria’s largest mobile money operator, has acquired Ethiopia’s software firm Apposit, to gain a scalable world-class internal engineering team and gain a stronger position in the global payments business.
Apposit, with operations in Addis Ababa began working with Paga in 2009, and will help Paga to launch and expand in Ethiopia and serve the growing population and mobile payments sector.
The deal will also give Paga an instant go-to-market strategy to launch the Paga service in Ethiopia under the vast experience and leadership of Adam Abate, Apposit co-founder & CEO, who will now become the CEO of Paga Ethiopia.
According to Paga Founder & CEO, Tayo Oviosu: “Our favorite motto at Paga is that we go farther together as a team, and this is exemplified in our decision to take our trusted business relationship with Apposit one step further and have them fully become a part of the Paga family. By doing so, we not only gain a scalable world-class internal engineering team, but we also are in a stronger position to grow our global payments business.”
Paga will take over Apposit’s other in-house technology products, Terra and Tangio. Terra is a digital agricultural platform that provides products and tools to collect, manage and analyse data in agricultural value chains. The Terra platform harnesses the power of data to improve decision making in agriculture. Tangio is a sales force automation platform for manufacturers and distributors of FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) products, providing companies the tools and intelligence to plan and execute their route to market strategies.
Apposit will join Paga staff and will be distributed around Lagos, Addis Ababa, London, and Mexico City to build a leading mobile money and multi-channel digital financial services platform for the global market. Now in its 11th year of operations, Paga has served 104 million transactions and processed over $6.6 billion from its over 14 million users and 25,000 agents operating across all 36 states in Nigeria.
Adam Abate, Apposit CEO, said: “The acquisition of Apposit by Paga is a very natural progression in the close relationship we have enjoyed with Paga over the last 10 years. 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. We also look forward to strengthening Paga’s product team and continuing to build technology that will be used globally.”
