Lagos
Nigerian digital payments startup Paga has acquired Apposit, a software development company based in Ethiopia, for an undisclosed amount, and also announced plans to launch its operations in Mexico this year.
With the acquisition, Paga absorbs Apposit’s tech capabilities and team of 63 engineers. The company will direct its boosted capabilities and total workforce of530 to support expansion.
The new arrangement will see Adam Abate, the former owner of Apposit as the new CEO of Paga Ethiopia, where Paga plans to go live as soon as it gains local regulatory approval.
The East African nation of 100 million, with the continent’s seventh largest economy, is bidding to become Africa’s next start up hub, though it still lags the continent’s tech standouts — like Nigeria and Kenya — in startup formation, ISP options and VC.
Ethiopia has also been slow to adopt digital finance, with less than 1 per cent of the population using mobile-money, compared to 73per cent for Kenya, Africa’s mobile-payments leader.
According to the CEO of Paga, Tayo Oviosu, the company aims to shift the financial needle in the country. “The goal is straight-forward. We want Ethiopians to use the Paga wallet as their payment account. So it’s about digitizing cash transactions and driving financial services,” he said.
Oviosu said Paga will leverage Apposit — which is U.S. incorporated but operates in Addis Ababa — to support that expansion into East Africa and Latin America.
“There are several very large countries around the world in Africa, Latin America, Asia where these [financial inclusion] problems still exist. So our strategy is not an African strategy…We want to go where these problems exist in a large way and build a global payments business,” Oviosu said.
Both Paga and Apposit were founded by repatriate entrepreneurs. Oviosu did his MBA at Stanford University and worked at Cisco Systems before returning to Nigeria.
Apposit CEO Adam Abate moved back to Ethiopia 17 years ago for an assignment in the country’s Ministry of Finance, after studying at Brown University and working in fintech in New York.
