Paga launches “Act II” via strategic partnerships with Sui and Crossmint, introducing programmable stablecoins to lower cross-border costs.
For nearly two decades, the primary mission for pioneering African financial technology firms was establishing reliable local fiat rails. Building mobile money agent networks, deploying point-of-sale terminals, and engineering functional domestic bank-transfer APIs successfully brought millions of unbanked individuals into the formal economy. Yet, despite these domestic advancements, cross-border commerce across the continent remains structurally constrained by currency devaluation, fragmented regional rails, and expensive intermediary banking fees.
As documented by Technext, to break through these systemic hurdles, one of Africa’s longest-operating and largest payment infrastructure giants has officially unveiled its highly anticipated corporate pivot, internally dubbed “Act II.” This new phase introduces an expansive architecture shifting Paga away from isolated fiat rails toward a hybrid, blockchain-native model. This transition is driven by high-profile strategic partnerships with Layer 1 blockchain network Sui and the enterprise Web3 platform Crossmint.
The cornerstone of Paga’s structural evolution is its deep technical integration with Crossmint. According to PR Newswire, this bi-directional collaboration allows Paga to implement next-generation, programmable smart contract wallets directly within its consumer applications and merchant-facing platforms.
By utilizing Crossmint’s institutional-grade API infrastructure, Paga bypasses the dense technical complexities of blockchain key management, delivering a frictionless user interface. Crucially, these wallets operate natively on-chain, allowing everyday consumers and small businesses to enforce programmable financial guardrails—including strict daily spending limits and cryptographic multi-party approvals—directly via the blockchain layer.
Concurrently, Crossmint will directly ingest Paga Engine’s robust local fiat on-and-off ramps into its international payout ecosystem. This enables multinational enterprises to accept localized African payments smoothly and settle them globally in their preferred stablecoin.
Tapping High-Performance Yield and Velocity
While Crossmint provides the foundational wallet abstractions, the high-performance Layer 1 blockchain network, Sui, serves as the primary engine for high-velocity, low-cost capital movement. As outlined on the official Paga Blog, Paga is actively integrating Sui Dollar ($USDsui) across its enterprise API suites.
Sui’s distinct parallel transaction execution model guarantees the throughput necessary to scale these applications. It allows multi-border capital distributions and dynamic micro-payments to settle in real time at a fraction of a cent. This presents a stark alternative to conventional correspondent networks, where regional remittances average three to five business days and attract severe friction taxes.
Driving Local Regulatory Compliance
Paga’s aggressive move into decentralized finance does not unfold in a regulatory vacuum. Earlier this year, Paga and a select cohort of elite fintech entities were formally admitted into the anti-money laundering supervisory framework managed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs). This compliance shield ensures that as Paga rolls out tokenized real-world assets, such as green energy bonds or fractionalized real estate, the ecosystem adheres strictly to regional security protocols.
Tayo Oviosu, Founder and Group CEO of Paga Group, noted that this multi-chain leap represents a natural progression for the company’s long-term roadmap:
“Paga has always been about building the rails for the future of money, and that future is multi-blockchain and multi-stablecoin. By combining Paga’s local financial rails with Crossmint’s programmable wallet infrastructure, we are connecting the African economy to global finance, eliminating the tax of friction, preserving wealth, and giving consumers the financial mobility they deserve.”
By layering decentralized financial rails atop a transaction engine that processed $11 billion across 169 million transactions in 2025 alone, Paga’s Act II is not a speculative experiment. It stands as a comprehensive blueprint for the next generation of financial inclusion across emerging markets.
