Digital payments platform, PawaPay, is now ramping up its services in other African countries with a potential for tech adaptability as the company’s transaction volume hits 1 billion.
- PawaPay’s API integrates different mobile money wallets allowing businesses from various parts of the continent to make instant and cheaper payouts.
- The company operates across 18 African countries, garnering a lot of success from mature digital payment markets like Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt, and South Africa.
- PawaPay, however, is trying to entrench itself in other countries like DRC, Uganda, and Cameroon where opportunities exist and competition is lacking.
“We saw an opportunity to become an enabler for businesses in countries ripe for digital payment solutions but often underserved by other providers. We’ve been laser-focused on delivering a reliable, merchant-first product, and that’s what’s made all the difference,” said Nikolai Barnwell, CEO of PawaPay.
PawaPay’s operations in these largely ignored countries encountered a demand for mobile money payments. This informed the company’s growth strategy, seeking to invest more innovative energy in other ‘forgotten’ African countries.
“Our upcoming milestone of 1 billion transactions isn’t just a celebration of the achievements of our merchants, but a testament to the potential across the entire continent,” Barnwell added.
PawaPay was launched in 2020 and a year later, closed seed funding of US$9 million to scale up its market presence. Like many other B2B digital payment solutions, PawaPay’s entry into the continent marked mobile money as an inevitable tunnel. Africa still lags globally in terms of digital literacy but mobile money is so convenient a method of sending and receiving cash without a lot of technical complexities.
According to GSMA state of the industry report this year, registered mobile money accounts grew by 12% to 1.75 billion in 2023 while transaction values for international remittances via mobile money grew to almost $29 billion and merchant payments by 14% to around $74 billion.
In 2023, Africa led globally in Mobile Money transactions, with 62 billion transactions, representing 65.6%. In Kenya, the mobile money market reached $133.2 billion in 2023 with M-Pesa alone accounting for more than 95% of the market share. This has led to fintechs moving in en masse to create dashboards that will connect fragmented mobile money solutions
