Global payments giant PayPal has launched a long-delayed service enabling Nigerians to receive and withdraw international payments, ending nearly two decades of exclusion by partnering with local fintech pioneer Paga.
The integration allows users to link their PayPal accounts to a Paga wallet, receive funds from over 200 countries, and instantly convert them to Naira for local spending or withdrawal, it said in a press release. This move grants Nigerias freelancers, online merchants, and families formal access to a global network of over 400 million users they were previously locked out of .
The partnership signals a strategic reversal for PayPal, which has cited fraud concerns since restricting Nigerians from receiving money in 2004. The decision had forced a generation of digital workers to rely on informal workarounds, endure frozen funds, or miss opportunities entirely . Pagas founder, Tayo Oviosu, first pitched the collaboration idea to PayPal in 2013, a proposal that has now taken 13 years to materialise.
