Paga Names New Nigeria CEO as Founder Tayo Oviosu Steps Back to Scale Bigger Bet

One of Nigeria’s most enduring fintech founders is stepping away from the day-to-day—and it says a lot about where the company is heading next.

Tayo Oviosu, who has led Paga since its founding, is transitioning into a Group CEO role after nearly two decades running the company’s core Nigerian business. In his place, the company has named Opeyemi Oyinloye as Acting CEO of Paga Nigeria, pending regulatory approval. The story first made the headlines in a TechCabal exclusive.

On paper, it’s a leadership reshuffle.

In reality, it’s a signal that Paga is moving into its next phase and that phase looks a lot bigger than Nigeria.

Oviosu isn’t stepping back so much as stepping up. In his new role, he’ll focus on expanding Paga beyond its home market, while doubling down on emerging areas like stablecoins, blockchain, and AI-powered commerce. 

That shift has been building for a while.

Paga has quietly evolved from a consumer payments app into something closer to financial infrastructure. In 2025 alone, the company processed ₦17.1 trillion in transactions, a 96% year-on-year jump while also expanding into the U.S. through diaspora banking partnerships and becoming PayPal’s local partner in Nigeria. 

At that scale, the bottleneck isn’t growth.

It’s focus.

Running day-to-day operations in Nigeria while trying to expand across Africa and into new technology layers is a difficult balancing act. Oviosu himself acknowledged as much, noting that accelerating the next phase of the business required someone else to take over operational leadership. 

That’s where Oyinloye comes in.

As general manager of business operations, she has been close to the core engine of Paga’s Nigerian business. Her appointment marks the first time someone other than Oviosu will lead the company’s largest market a symbolic shift for a company that has been founder-led since inception.

But the bigger story isn’t the leadership change.

It’s what Paga is becoming.

At the group level, Oviosu will now oversee Paga Labs, a unit that has been operating quietly for over a year. The focus: building new products across stablecoins, blockchain infrastructure, and AI-enabled commerce. 

That puts Paga in a very different category.

Instead of competing purely as a payments company, it’s positioning itself as a platform that sits at the intersection of fintech and emerging technology—closer to infrastructure than app.

And that shift mirrors a broader trend across African fintech.

Companies that started with payments are now moving up the stack into lending, banking, developer infrastructure, and increasingly, AI. The logic is simple: payments alone are becoming commoditized. The real value is moving toward platforms that can orchestrate entire financial experiences.

Paga seems to be betting on that future.

The question now is execution.

Because expanding across Africa, building new financial rails, and layering AI on top of it all is a very different challenge from scaling a payments business in a single market.

But if the transition works, it could redefine what one of Nigeria’s oldest fintechs actually is.

Not just a payments company.

But a financial platform with ambitions far beyond its origins.