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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, I 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?
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? From I 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 what really drives us, myself and 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 unused money. Right? But the way we're going about it requires a different approach which we have taken which is that you know, the insight if you want to bank a billion people you don't build a bank. To bank a billion people you build the 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 into into their services. Um 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 um 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. Um and we also give the ability to then efficiently send money out as well and and orchestrate fiat um as well. Now what we're doing and the announcement we made today with Civi is launching stablecoins into the Paga infrastructure. Um and enabling now going from fiat to stablecoins, stablecoins to fiat, and also hosting stablecoin wallets. So um 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 uh 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? Where 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 I'll tell you how it's similar and how it upgrades. So, the 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 sweet 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 us in fiat. And 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 sweet stable dollar stablecoin. Sweet dollar stablecoin. And you can send money to somebody on USDC. And that could be USDC on sweet. It could be USDC on Solana. Right? We give you the liberty to to choose what you 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 the entry points for for years was it wasn't easy. User experience has been difficult.
So, walk us through for someone who isn't familiar with Paga, uh walk us through the setup, how they would go about um connecting to that network, to this new exciting frontier that we have.
>> Yeah. Yeah, so for businesses um who want to build and innovate on Paga, uh we call the Paga engine uh because we look at it that we want to be the engine that powers your vision and your ambition. Um 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. Um we can make it come in a very compliant way, um enable you to to build on on our infrastructure. If you want to target Nigeria and the African market more broadly. Um and then soon we're launching into other African markets, right? To 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, um which you can find in any of the app stores um directly.
Do they have to do anything specifically to tap into uh the um stablecoins blockchain or is it just seamless part of the experience?
>> Well, you have to go through a detailed KYB process um and we we don't take that for granted. Um that is something that we make sure everybody goes through. We want to understand the source of funds, want to understand we do AML and all of these capabilities, right? Uh to make sure that we're abiding by the regulation and also making sure we're keeping out bad actors. Um but yes, but once you do that, then you have access.
Some critics have been saying over the years that crypto is a solution in search of a problem rather than the other way around. What do you have How would you uh respond to that given that Yeah. You already had a very successful infrastructure.
>> Yeah. Well, look, I think the way I think about it is this. First of all, blockchain technology in of itself has significant value proposition across various sectors of society. And I actually don't think we've yet fully leveraged it to the full. I'll give you an example. Some of it is going to be behind the scenes. Customers are not going to see. Last year, we launched block into a blockchain a private blockchain in Nigeria that connects financial institutions. And we use that for processing physical card transactions. So, each financial institution has a node of the blockchain. And that way when we see a card as an example from Bank of America, we don't have to go through the switch. We go directly to Bank of America. And then we don't have to depend on hearing from Bank of America directly because it's on the blockchain, we can hear from the other nodes and confirm the transaction. We sped up transactions by 30%. So, now the way the customer feels that is that they're using the point of sale machine and the transaction's processing faster and the merchant likes that. So, I think there's a lot of value proposition for blockchain in general. Um and when it comes to for crypto, now I would separate out stable coins from other crypto assets like Bitcoin, etc. I think Bitcoin as an example for me is a an appreciating asset. So, I think of it like I would think of gold and I would think about like my portfolio, right? So, I you want you know, I would 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? Like and you think of crypto as kind of crypto assets in that way. Stable coins I think is a game changer. And the reason why it's a game changer is because now Paga in in Africa does not need to have an integration to Stripe Stripe's ecosystem or to StraightX in Singapore, right? Because we can send them a stable coin and they can confirm that and get the value in real time. Right? And so it enables multiple parties to connect together through a defined currency that is on a blockchain that they can verify independently. And I think that's significant value.
You mentioned um Sui dollar stable coin. What made you interested in Sui specifically? Because obviously there's so many blockchains. So what caught your attention with Sui specifically?
>> yeah, a number of things did actually. Um so we spent we're very thoughtful about which blockchain that we wanted to build our own innovation on top of. Um while keeping in mind that because we are infrastructure, we have to give our clients the flexibility to use multiple blockchains. So we will have and and do have access to multiple blockchains. But we chose Sui specifically because it has been built with the extensibility from day one that we think is needed for the next billion. Right? Because the next billion is not going to be just people, it's going to be agents and software that is walking on their behalf. Right? So you need a platform that can actually scale horizontally, like really well. And Sui structurally is already there. Two, we think privacy is really important. So not as a patch, but as thought about from day one on privacy, right? And so again, that was another place where we saw Sui is ahead. Um and then and then the other places around um thinking thinking through the cost of transactions, right? I mean we we heard that Damien earlier today talking about zero cost, right? Um so look, we don't expect it to always be free, but like we want it to be fast enough, cheap enough, right? And global enough to serve a billion people. And we feel very confident about Swee on that. Then Then the added bonus for us was the commitment we saw from the team, right? To want to see and achieve similar goals to us across the African continent. And really getting in there, let's play the long game on how do we enable Africans to access and use money, Right.
Speaking of Africa, I cannot let you go without asking about the a little bit the the wider perspective of crypto adoption in Africa. It's It's an insight we don't get to hear often enough in the media. So, I want to get your perspective of how you see crypto adoption in Africa more widely.
>> Yeah, I mean, it's the It's the fastest growing region in the world of crypto adoption. Um and the reasons are very clear, right? Currencies are eroding, right? Um you know, people don't have access to global financial rails. I was in recently in Kenya within Africa with my chief group COO, and his Nigeria details could not work in Kenya. I had to give him my US card, my Paga US card. Um and I was actually going to Consensus Hong Kong from there. And I was like, "Okay, well, in Hong Kong, tap and pay works, right?" So, I could use tap and which is what I did. But, I didn't have a card. And thank God I didn't need a card, right? Like And so, what what has happened is that people end up using and then And then I talked about it in my my talk as well, right? Cross-border transfers taking 3 to 5 days, 6.5%. Crypto has given those people who've been able to clue into crypto early um has given them 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, um and get it more mainstream. And I think that's only going to accelerate the the the adoption of crypto. And we're not going to be the only ones. There'll be others who will do similar. And so we're going to see a massive massive adoption of crypto. I mean, this generation, you got to remember that Africa has the youngest population in the world. Right? This These are I was I was talking to my son a couple days ago. He's 7 years old. And um and he was like, you know, he got tired of the conversation and he was like, "Daddy, what are we going to talk about?" And I was like, "You know how lucky you are that you have you can talk to me while traveling and you're there's a smartphone." I was like, "When I was your age, we didn't have phones." Yeah. And when my mom traveled, I didn't see her or talk to her till she arrived. He was like, "What?" He was like, "I'm sorry." I'm like, "You don't have to be sorry." But like, that's just, you know, so he and his generation is a generation that doesn't know anything other than the smartphone, right? They don't have the patience to wait for the banking system to change. They're going to leapfrog it completely. So I see everything we're doing and the commitment we see, right, to drive and scale um stable coins on the continent, um to drive and scale crypto on the continent is going to be a game-changer for how they live their lives later.
And out of curiosity, when you first heard about crypto, did you think of it as an opportunity or as a threat to your business?
>> I thought of it as an opportunity. Um and you know, but I but I wish I really wish now that I actually saved my key on the one Bitcoin I bought. Because I've tried to to re- recover that key and I haven't. And so um it's been very painful. But um but actually that that experience has actually been a key learning for us as well as we think about what we're doing, right? Because we've got to execute this in a way that makes it seamless and easy to adopt. Right? And that's a key part of like the the tough part of the architecture work and the tough part of like what we're trying to do. But yes, but I did see it as an opportunity. And we first dabbled around enabling Bitcoin, which is actually still alive. You can send BTC into Nigeria in real time. It's a in a beta mode, but it works. But again, when you understand the appreciating asset, we're like, why would you do that? Right? Um that's why I'm really excited about stablecoins, cuz I think stablecoins actually then does really work. Well, you're wearing Bitcoin orange, so
>> Yeah.
>> Thank you so much. Excellent stuff. David Atilola of yours, thank you so much for joining us on Real Vision.
>> Absolutely. It's a pleasure. Thank you, Atilola. Thank you.
>> Yeah.