Untapped Global partners with Paga to boost digital payments for Nigerian SMEs

By Edlyn Cardoza

Untapped Global, an investment company focused on emerging markets, announces a scale-up of its partnership with Paga, the mobile payment and financial services company. The program finances point-of-sale devices (POS) for merchants in Nigeria, the largest country in Africa, but still underserved in financial services.

The collaboration between Paga and Untapped focuses on empowering small businesses to accept digital payments and bring financial services to the masses. The financing is structured to lower the overall cost of entry for merchants to acquire a handheld POS terminal and other digital tools for their businesses, making it easy for them to buy, sell, and get paid.

“We are excited to scale our POS rollout program with Untapped,” said Tayo Oviosu, Founder and CEO of Paga Group. “We have built the best on-ramps and off-ramps for cash in Nigeria through the Paga agent network and are further digitizing merchants via our new merchant platform, Doroki. Across our ecosystem, we currently have over 33,000 merchants. Our collaboration with Untapped is accelerating our progress to reaching 120,000 merchants in the next two years by lowering the startup and onboarding costs for merchants.”

Untapped Global offers Smart Asset Financing to asset-based businesses across Africa and other emerging markets. Smart Asset Financing is an innovative investment model that provides flexible capital for fast-growing enterprises like Paga, leveraging technology to make investments safer and more profitable for investors by tracking assets and capturing revenue in real-time.

Paga’s POS devices enable merchants to accept cards, mobile payments, and other forms of digital payments and offer other value-add financial services to customers. The financing from Untapped is unique, as payments are recovered from the revenues earned on the devices. Lowering the cost of entry for using mobile payments is key to delivering the benefits of Africa’s growing FinTech revolution to even the smallest businesses.

“The network of the POS devices that will be available for merchants via this partnership is powerful,” Untapped founder and CEO, Jim Chu, commented. “It enables a seamless process for merchants and their customers to buy, sell, and get paid. We’re excited to use Smart Asset Financing to greatly increase access to financial services across Nigeria with partners that know the space best, like Paga.”

Untapped and Paga had an initial and successful pilot in 2021. Scaling up the availability of the devices shows the impact these devices have on small businesses, particularly in emerging markets like Nigeria.

“Our goal at Paga Group is to make it simple for 1 billion people to pay, get paid, and access financial services,” Oviosu said. “The team at Untapped is aligned with that goal, and the current partnership showcases its objective to ensure that entrepreneurs have the opportunity to scale to their full potential.”