Paga Acquires Apposit And Plans To Launch It’s Payment Service In Ethiopia

Paga, a Nigerian digital payment startup, announces it’s acquisition of Apposit. Apposit a US registered and Ethiopia based software development company is founded by diaspora returnees.

Apposit is known for high quality software products in Ethiopia. Some of it’s clients includes the Ethiopian Commodities Exchange and Agricultural Transformation Agency.

The relationship between Apposit and Paga didn’t start now however. It started when Paga tasked Apposit with building and maintaining its payments platform from Addis Abeba.

With that, Apposit dedicated 25 software developers to exclusively work on the Paga platform. It is also reported that Apposit was also a seed investor in Paga.

Now with this acquisition by undisclosed amount, Apposit team will join Paga fully and Paga will push it’s planed expansion to  Ethiopia and Mexico

It’s is believed that Apposit strong technical team will help Paga’s expansion outside of Nigeria.

As the Nigerian payment space becomes more competitive with the entrance of the likes Opay and Plampay, It seems obvious for Paga to find additional alternative growth markets.

The already existing relationship with Apposit in Ethiopia provides an easy market entry channel to Ethiopia.

A medium post by Paga said “Acquiring Apposit provides Paga with 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”

Tech Crunch reported that Paga aims to get live soon in Ethiopia as soon us Banking License is acquired. Adam Abate also becomes the CEO of Paga Ethiopia. 

However it is not clear how Paga plans to get license. As of the moment Fintech Startups can’t get a license operate a payment business in Ethiopia.  They will need to partner with already existing Banks and Microfinance as technology provider.

There is a new regulation National Bank have been working on for last 6 month. This regulations paves a way for Fintech’s to be recognized standalone as Digital Finance Service (DFS) providers as long they fulfill the requirement set by National bank which includes 50 million ETB initial capital.

But according to the draft of this regulation the license for DFS providers is only served for locals. This is going to be an issue for Paga unless there is a change when the regulation becomes official.

This acquisition also comes with Two of Apposit product joining Paga. The two product called Terra and Tangio focuses on Agricultural value chain and FMCG sector respective.

Terra is a digital agricultural platform that provides products & tools to collect, manage and analyze 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 products. It provides companies the tools and intelligence to plan and execute their route to market strategies.

Founder & CEO , Tayo Oviosu mentioned to CNBC that Paga might also bring two of Apposit products to other markets.

Besides the CEO, the leadership and the team of Apposit will be joining Paga . Simon Solomon, co-founder of Apposit becomes the Lead Systems Architect while Gideon, managing partner at Apposit becomes the Head of Product Innovation at Paga.

When the 62 team members of Apposit joins the Paga, it brings the total staff to over 530 people.

We are working on ” 2019 Investment and funding report for Startups in Ethiopia” and we think you would like it.

We have been collecting data over the year but we don’t think we have it all.  So if you are a startup ( tech or non tech) from Ethiopia and raised any funding (equity or non-equity), please fill your details here. We would love to include you in the report.

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