Paga expands Direct Debit access for businesses beyond its network 

Paga, one of Africa’s oldest fintechs, is expanding its Direct Debit access to let businesses using Paga Engine, its payments infrastructure business, collect recurring payments from accounts outside its network. 

The move is part of Paga’s strategy to expand beyond consumer payments and become a financial infrastructure provider for other businesses. In May, TechCabal reported that Paga was positioning Paga Engine to commercialise nearly two decades of payment technology it had developed to support its own operations. 

The company wants businesses to use its infrastructure instead of building their own payment systems. With the Direct Debit expansion, businesses can now collect recurring payments from customers who bank with other Nigerian financial institutions.

“At the core of our business is the infrastructure; everything we build, we build it into that infrastructure, and we’re extending that infrastructure for others to leverage,” Ramon Bello, general manager of Paga Engine, told TechCabal in an interview in September. “In Nigeria, for businesses to enjoy this sort of service (direct debit), they would have to leverage a card infrastructure. There’s really no scale for you to do it across multiple financial infrastructures, and that’s one of the things that we’re changing.”

Paga will compete with payment infrastructure providers such as Paystack, Flutterwave, and Zeeh Africa, which already offer automated bank-account collections. 

Direct Debit remains a small part of Nigeria’s electronic payments landscape, despite the large volume of money moving through the channel. Direct Debit transactions reached 157.4 million in 2024, with a combined value of approximately ₦23.3 trillion ($17 billion), according to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) data, up 17% from the previous year.

Paga’s expanded infrastructure uses existing interbank payment rails, according to Bello. The company is betting that making the infrastructure accessible to businesses collecting from customers across different banks could expand direct debit’s usefulness.

“There is an existing rail that allows you to connect from one bank to about a hundred or more banks,” Bello said. “That same rail is what we have leveraged to provide this similar infrastructure, so that any business would be able to connect to any bank. Instead of just a one-time payment, they can now do a recurring payment.”

Once a customer authorises a merchant for direct debit, the business can initiate subsequent collections without requiring the customer to make each payment manually. The infrastructure could help businesses with customers spread across different banks. 

A digital lender, for instance, could now collect loan repayments directly from a borrower’s bank account rather than depending on the borrower to remember repayment dates, and subscription businesses could also use it to collect monthly payments.

According to Bello, Paga Engine currently supports more than 400 businesses across sectors including manufacturing, fintech, digital content and e-commerce. Its website lists Meta and Amazon among its clients. Paga Engine also provides wallet services that allow other businesses to host wallets on Paga. 

Paga Engine processed approximately $12 billion in transaction value across about 100 million transactions in 2025, according to Bello. In June, Paga partnered with TBook, a blockchain infrastructure company, to offer tokenised real-world assets through its platform. The partnership connects Paga’s payment and compliance infrastructure with TBook’s marketplace for tokenised investments.

The company’s plans for Paga Engine also extend beyond domestic payments. Bello said it is also building the infrastructure that will let Nigerian businesses collect payments from international customers through PayPal. 

In January, Paga announced a partnership with PayPal that enabled Nigerian freelancers to receive payments from international customers. Bello said the company was working to extend similar capabilities to Nigerian businesses, allowing them to collect payments from customers globally through PayPal’s international infrastructure.

“There is also the part of extending our core infrastructure beyond Nigeria, enabling businesses to be able to access USD accounts and Euro accounts,” he said. “All of these things are in the arsenal that we are currently cooking as part of the infrastructure.”