Paga Moves Into Stablecoins And Tokenised Assets In New Sui Partnership

Paga has taken its first formal step into crypto, announcing a partnership with Sui, the blockchain network developed by US-based Mysten Labs, to power stablecoin accounts, tokenised assets and crypto payments across its markets.

The deal, unveiled at the Sui Live event in Miami, is Paga’s first major crypto move since founder Tayo Oviosu became Group CEO in April. One of Africa’s longest-running fintech companies, Paga is now positioning blockchain as the next layer of its digital payments infrastructure.

The partnership focuses on four areas:

• High-yield USD accounts: Paga plans to offer dollar accounts backed by USDsui, Sui’s newly launched US dollar stablecoin. USDsui is yield-bearing, meaning users can earn interest simply by holding the token.
• Crypto on-ramps and off-ramps: Users will be able to move between local currencies and crypto with less friction across Paga’s markets.
• Tokenised real-world assets (RWAs): The roadmap includes tokenised exposure to assets such as real estate, bonds and solar projects.
• Cross-border payment rails: The companies plan to enable cheaper, faster payments for both businesses and consumers across borders.

Oviosu told the audience in Miami that Paga wants to build financial rails that help Africans hedge against currency instability, participate more easily in global commerce, improve cross-border payments and widen access to alternative financial products.

Describing barriers to financial access as the “walls of the cage,” he argued that breaking those barriers requires “the right rails, the right partner, the right technology that is fast enough, cheap enough and global enough to serve 1 billion people,” adding that Paga had found that partner in Sui.

In practice, Paga users could be able to hold a USD account with automatic yield, switch between naira or other local currencies and crypto, tap into tokenised investment opportunities that were historically out of reach, and move money across borders with the ease and cost profile of sending an email, according to Oviosu’s description of the roadmap.

Paga’s move comes as more African fintechs treat crypto and blockchain less as a speculative asset class and more as financial infrastructure for payments, settlement and treasury.

In October 2025, Flutterwave entered a partnership with blockchain firm Polygon to develop its stablecoin payments stack. In January, Stripe-owned Paystack reorganised into The Stack Group (TSG) in a bid to deepen research into emerging technologies within fintech. Both companies were admitted on March 31 into the Central Bank of Nigeria’s anti-money laundering supervisory programme for virtual asset service providers (VASPs).

Oviosu framed the overall opportunity in continental terms, pointing to the large share of Africans still outside the traditional banking system. He said 57% of African adults do not have a bank account, calling Africa “the single largest financial greenfield market in the world” and describing that as the opportunity Paga is targeting.

Paga’s existing footprint gives the Sui partnership immediate scale. The company currently processes about $1.5 billion in payments each month. In 2025, it handled $11 billion across 169 million transactions, Oviosu said. Since launching in 2009, Paga has processed $42 billion in total payment volume from 653 million transactions.

Oviosu characterised that volume in human terms, describing it as school fees paid, salaries received and money sent to family members “instantly, safely, and at a fraction of the cost of what it used to [be],” and argued that this infrastructure is still at an early stage.

For Sui, the partnership offers another payments-heavy use case for its network. Sui introduced its native SUI token in 2023 and this week launched USDsui, its US dollar-backed stablecoin. The product enters a stablecoin market currently led by Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC, but differentiates itself by being yield-bearing and directly competing with similar interest-earning stablecoins like DAI.

Bridge, the US crypto infrastructure company that Stripe acquired for $1.1 billion in 2025, will issue USDsui on the Sui blockchain.