I think Bitcoin as an example for me is an appreciating asset. So, I think of it like I would think of gold and I would think about like my portfolio. So, you want to advise anybody to have a balanced portfolio, right? You have some cash, you have some equities, you have some gold, you should have some Bitcoin, right? So, Paga, what really drives us, myself and the team, is that we want to make access to financial services an afterthought for Africans. We want to make it simple for 1 billion people to access and use money. But, the way we're going about it requires a different approach, which we have taken. 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 we feel very confident about Sui on that. Then, the added bonus for us was the commitment we saw from the team to want to see and achieve similar goals to us across the African continent, and really getting it that let's play the long game.
Welcome to Sui live from Miami. I am joined by Tayo Oviosu, founder and group CEO of Paga. Thank you so much for joining us.
Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
Paga is a Nigerian-based financial services company, huge in Nigeria, huge in Africa, but to many of our viewers around the world, it might not be well-known. So, could you give us a little bit of background about the company, what do you guys do? I heard that you process around 12 billion dollars worth of transactions last year. So, obviously, it's a huge company, but give us a little bit of background.
Yeah. Thank you very much. So, Paga, what really drives us, myself and the team, is that we want to make access to financial services an afterthought for Africans and make it available to Africans so that they can live the lives that they want to live both domestically as well as get access to global financial rails. So we have what we call a massive transformative purpose that we're trying to go after which is we want to make it simple for 1 billion people to access and use money. Right? But the way we're going about it requires a different approach which we have taken which is that the insight if you want to bank a billion people you don't build a bank. To bank a billion people you build the infrastructure and the rails for an entire ecosystem to build on top of to build banks, to build wallets, to build agents, to build so many more new things on top of. So that is what we have done. So we have built the infrastructure and the rails starting in Nigeria that enable others to build on top of it and accelerate their go-to-market because they can embed financial services into their services. And we've done this traditionally or it's up to date on fiat. So in Nigeria where we can host naira accounts for you, where we can host dollar accounts, we can enable you to receive money a variety of ways into those accounts and you can put those into, when I say host for you, into your own app, into your own services. And we also give the ability to then efficiently send money out as well and orchestrate fiat as well. Now what we're doing and the announcement we made today with Sui is launching stablecoins into the Paga infrastructure. And enabling now going from fiat to stablecoins, stablecoins to fiat, and also hosting stablecoin wallets. So we're very fortunate and you know, for the clients that we have and the customers we serve but we're processing about 1 and 1/2 billion dollars a month now in transaction value and we think it's just beginning.
Sounds like exponential growth. So, how does that blockchain infrastructure, you mentioned the word infrastructure, how does that compare to what you have built over the years? How does it upgrade what you already have?
Yeah, it's a great question. The main way it's going to upgrade what we already have is that we are... I'll tell you how it's similar and how it upgrades. So, the way it upgrades 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 the similarity comes in is that we are obfuscating the complexity. And making it as simple as what they have been doing with us in fiat. And so we're doing that hard work to do the cross-chain and all of these different things. And the bridging to enable them to easily move their money, right? So, you can keep your money in Sui dollar stablecoin. And you can send money to somebody on USDC. And that could be USDC on Sui. It could be USDC on Solana. Right? We give you the liberty to choose what you do, right? But we enable all of this and make it quite seamless and easy for them to do.
And this is something that crypto has struggled for a long time, right? The entry points for years was it wasn't easy. User experience has been difficult. So, walk us through for someone who isn't familiar with Paga, walk us through the setup, how they would go about connecting to that network, to this new exciting frontier that we have.
Yeah. So for businesses who want to build and innovate on Paga, we call the Paga engine because we look at it that we want to be the engine that powers your vision and your ambition. You go to www.pagaengine.com and reach out to us from there. We're currently offering our services to businesses in Nigeria or outside of Nigeria. We can make it come in a very compliant way, enable you to build on our infrastructure. If you want to target Nigeria and the African market more broadly. And then soon we're launching into other African markets, right? To bring the same infrastructure to other African markets and bring the same capabilities to them. So that's the number one way that people can access it. Now, as an individual, the way you can access Paga is by using our mobile app, which you can find in any of the app stores directly.
Do they have to do anything specifically to tap into the stablecoins blockchain or is it just seamless part of the experience?
Well, you have to go through a detailed KYB process and we don't take that for granted. That is something that we make sure everybody goes through. We want to understand the source of funds, we want to understand, we do AML and all of these capabilities, right? To make sure that we're abiding by the regulation and also making sure we're keeping out bad actors. But yes, but once you do that, then you have access.
