Twenty-One Years in the Making: How Paga Brought PayPal Back to Nigeria

Fadekemi Ajakaiye

In 2013, Tayo Oviosu sent a proposal to PayPal. He was the founder of a young Nigerian fintech company with a vision to connect local payment infrastructure to the global financial system. PayPal did not respond in any meaningful way. At the time, Nigeria was a market the company had already moved to limit. Inbound payments had been restricted since 2004, with fraud concerns often cited as a key reason. The result was the exclusion of Nigerian users from one of the world’s most widely used payment platforms.

Thirteen years later, PayPal returned to the conversation.

The partnership between Paga and PayPal, announced in January 2026, has effectively reopened access for Nigerian users to receive international payments directly and withdraw funds in naira. It marks the first structured integration of its kind since restrictions were introduced more than two decades ago. The development reflects not only a shift in policy, but also the evolution of Nigeria’s domestic payments infrastructure over the intervening years.

On the Paga side, the product enabling the integration was led by Omonigho Okome, Senior Product Manager. Her team spent nearly a year working through technical, regulatory, and user experience requirements needed to support the system.

“The problem was never that Nigerians couldn’t earn globally,” Okome said in a conversation with ThisDay. “The challenge was that the infrastructure to receive what they earned was not accessible. We built this because that gap was costing people time and money every day.”
The structure of the partnership reflects a broader trend in how global payment platforms are now engaging with the Nigerian market. Paga contributed its local payments infrastructure, regulatory relationships, agent network, and more than 21 million users built over years of domestic operations. PayPal brought its global payments network, spanning over 200 markets, as well as access to international merchants and platforms already used by Nigerian freelancers, creators, and businesses.
“We were not trying to reinvent anything,” Okome said. “PayPal already had global reach. Paga already had local infrastructure. The task was ensuring both systems could work together in a way that was practical for users in Nigeria.”

Under the integration, Nigerian users are able to link their PayPal accounts to their Paga wallets, receive payments from supported international sources, and withdraw funds in naira. Users may also hold balances in foreign currency, spend with global merchants, or transfer funds directly to local bank accounts. The partnership further extends access to payments from Venmo users in the United States, broadening the range of international clients available to Nigerian digital workers.

The development comes amid a wider pattern of renewed engagement by global payment companies with Nigeria, often through partnerships with established local platforms rather than standalone market entry. Visa has expanded investment in local payment infrastructure, while American Express has partnered with Flutterwave to widen merchant acceptance. The shift reflects a market that has grown significantly in scale and complexity over the past decade.

Nigeria’s electronic payment transaction value reached 1.07 quadrillion naira in 2024, up from 600 trillion naira the previous year, according to industry data. The scale of growth has repositioned the country as one of the most active digital payments markets globally.

For users who previously navigated restrictions by relying on intermediaries, the impact is also personal.
“For many users, this is not just about convenience,” Okome said. “It is about being able to receive payments directly for work done without needing someone else to intermediate. That independence matters.”

Paga’s 2013 proposal was not ahead of its time. The market it described already existed. It would take more than a decade for global infrastructure to align with it.