Tayo Oviosu is stepping down from the day-to-day running of Paga Nigeria after 17 years, transitioning to the role of Group CEO as part of a major leadership reshuffle at one of Africa’s oldest fintechs.
Opeyemi Oyinloye, the company’s general manager of business operations, will take over as Acting CEO of Paga Nigeria, pending regulatory approval from the Central Bank of Nigeria.
Oviosu’s new role will focus on expanding into new African markets and building out Paga’s investments in stablecoins, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence-powered commerce.
The transition marks the first time in Paga’s history that someone other than Oviosu will lead its largest market. It also signals that the fintech, once focused primarily on Nigerian payments, is positioning itself as a pan-African financial services infrastructure provider.
“Act 1 of Paga ended, and Act 2 is beginning,” Oviosu told TechCabal in March. “It became very clear to me about a year ago that for us to accelerate, we need someone else to come and run the day-to-day of the business lines.”
The restructuring comes at a significant moment for Paga. The company processed ₦17.1 trillion ($12 billion) in transaction value in 2025, a 96% year-on-year increase. It launched US banking services for the African diaspora in September 2025 through a partnership with Regent Bank, and in January 2026 became PayPal’s local partner in Nigeria, marking the global payments network’s return to the country after two decades.
Oviosu wants Paga to expand further by entering new African markets, developing stablecoin products, and investing in AI-enabled commerce—efforts he could not lead while managing the company’s complex domestic operations.
The company has raised $45 million to date from investors including the Global Innovation Fund, Omidyar Network, and Adlevo Capital, and is planning a new funding round.
Oviosu said the transition had been in the works since last year, before the PayPal partnership and US expansion, not because of them. The trigger was strategic: Paga aims to become what Oviosu calls the “global financial services infrastructure for Africa,” and reaching that goal requires shifting from domestic operations to new markets and technologies.
Jay Alabraba, Paga’s co-founder and director of business development, is also transitioning to group director of special projects, with an initial focus on building out Paga’s financial services offerings around credit and lending, and supporting Oviosu on new market entry.
At the group level, Oviosu will lead Paga Labs, a unit that has been operating quietly for about 18 months. The division is Paga’s vehicle for investing in emerging financial technologies, and Oviosu said it is preparing to launch products across three areas: stablecoins, blockchain (where it has already partnered with local partners), and AI-enabled commerce.
Oviosu would also lead Paga’s international expansion, with the company’s strategy evolving from earlier ambitions to enter markets like Mexico and the Philippines to a sharper focus on Africa and the African diaspora. The US launch was a deliberate step toward giving Africans access to global financial rails, and the PayPal partnership was designed to connect Nigerians to global commerce.
Paga’s next phase is opening its infrastructure to financial systems in other countries, enabling businesses and individuals to trade and make cross-border payments through the company’s consumer app or through third-party applications built on Paga Engine.
“You should be able to, through Paga’s infrastructure, trade in China. Through Paga’s infrastructure, pay someone in Vietnam easily. Show up in Rwanda and make your payments,” Oviosu said.
Oviosu described Oyinloye’s previous role using an analogy: if Paga were making sausages, Oyinloye was not responsible for choosing which sausages to make but for ensuring that whatever sausages were being made were made really well. That internal focus gave Oyinloye visibility into every dimension of the business, from strategy alignment and execution cadence to how the company takes care of its people.
As CEO of Paga Nigeria, Oyinloye will report to the Paga Nigeria board, which Oviosu will chair. Oviosu has always been the board chairman for Paga Group. The role also carries the title of Group COO at the United Kingdom parent level, with all established businesses reporting to Oyinloye.
The restructuring is not tied to a specific capital raise, Oviosu said, but he confirmed that Paga will go out and raise fresh funding to finance its group-level ambitions. The company is also likely to pursue acquisitions to expand into new markets.
Paga is currently profitable, which Oviosu said gives the company the ability to control its own destiny. But the scale of what it is attempting—entering new African countries, building stablecoin products, and investing in AI-powered commerce—will require fresh capital.
Alabraba echoed the need for fresh funding, noting that while the restructuring is not a fundraising prerequisite, it shows the scale Paga wants to operate at and the kind of investment required.
“There will be fundraising events in the near future,” he said.
For 17 years, Oviosu has been the public face of Paga, responding to customer complaints on social media, engaging directly with users, and serving as the company’s most visible spokesperson. He acknowledged that his transition may raise questions about whether something is wrong at the company.
“The phrase ‘stepping back’ is actually not the right phrase,” he said, noting that he got emotional when informing the CBN about the change. “My child’s first word was Paga.”
The transition, however, is about acceleration, not retreat. He plans to remain active on social media, continue engaging with customers, and still come to the office. The broader leadership team is also becoming more visible.
At the very first town hall Paga ever held, Oviosu told his team two things that surprised them. The first was that he wanted Paga to exist in some form 200 years from now. The second was that he would not be there forever, but he intended to move through the company on his own terms.
Seventeen years in, Oviosu sees this restructuring as the inflection point he described back then. The business is profitable, still scaling at venture pace, and operating in a competitive market that demands constant vigilance.
However, the opportunity to build financial infrastructure that connects Africa to global financial systems is, in his view, too large to pursue while also running the day-to-day of a complex Nigerian operation.
“I’m certainly not going to Bora Bora,” Oviosu said. “There’s still work to do.”
