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Tayo Oviosu

CEO & Founder, Paga

Search every verified Tayo Oviosu interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Tayo Oviosu, founder and group CEO of the African payments company Paga, has been speaking at events including Sui Live Miami in May 2026 about the company's expansion into blockchain-based financial services. Oviosu described Paga's integration with the Sui blockchain to offer stablecoin wallets and US dollar accounts backed by the Sui dollar stablecoin, stating that the company aims to "obfuscate the complexity" of cryptocurrency for users. He said that Paga processes $1.5 billion per month and reported that in 2025 the company processed $11 billion from 169 million transactions, with $42 billion processed since inception. Oviosu characterized Africa as a "green field market" for financial services, noting that 57% of African adults lack a bank account. He argued that "to bank a billion people you don't build a bank" but rather "build the infrastructure and the rails for an entire ecosystem to build on top of." Oviosu described Bitcoin as "an appreciating asset" comparable to gold in a portfolio, while expressing greater enthusiasm for stablecoins as a practical tool for payments. He cited currency instability as a problem for African savers, saying that "when currencies devalue, savings evaporate." Oviosu also recounted a personal story about a friend's medical emergency in Lagos to illustrate the consequences of limited access to cash and digital payments.

Recent appearances

Notable quotes

“57% of African adults don't have a bank account. Now, when I when people hear that number, they see problem. I see something different. I see a Africa that is the single largest financial market green field market in the world and that is the opportunity that we are going after.”

“if you want to bank a billion people, you don't build a bank. If you want to bank a billion people, you build the infrastructure that enables others to build banks on top of, that enables others to build wallets on top of, agents, capabilities, talk about AI agents, right? Build all of these capabilities on top of what we're doing, right?”

“Crypto has given those people who've been able to clue into crypto early an avenue to transact efficiently and at a lower cost at a fraction of the cost. And that's why we're seeing the adoption really scale. So, what we are now doing is saying, 'Okay, let us take the capabilities around stable coins and bring it to the mass market through the infrastructure, through our 300-plus clients, and get it more mainstream.'”

“The main way it's going to upgrade what we already have is that it now enables our clients to easily access stablecoin wallets, to easily access US dollar accounts that are backed by Sui dollar stablecoin, and to easily move money between different stablecoins on different chains. And where this the similarity comes in is that we are obfuscating the complexity and making it as simple as what they have been doing with”

“Currency stability erodes wealth. When currencies devalue, savings evaporate, buying power goes down. A teacher in a school teacher in Lagos who has saved all her career watched her her earnings and her wealth devalue by three times in a year by no fault of hers. This is not a bug in the African system. This is the the the experience of hundreds of millions of people.”

“For the person who is importing goods into Nigeria, or the parent who's trying to send money abroad to pay for school fees for their kid, they are spending They take them 3 to 5 days for money to clear, and they're spending 6.4 percent in fees. That's about double the global average. So, we pay more, we take It takes longer, and we're cut out of the system of efficiency the rest of the world enjoys. This is a tax on ”

The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →