Payaza Africa Limited, a player in Nigeria’s fintech landscape, is tapping the debt markets for ₦50 billion via a Commercial Paper (CP) issuance, even as its latest financials reveal a heavy reliance on a single international revenue stream and a nearly tenfold surge in borrowing costs.
While the firm reported a stellar 162% jump in gross profit to ₦21.1 billion for the 2025 financial year, and net income up 68% to ₦12.2 billion, the results underscore a high-stakes pivot toward international collections and a balance sheet increasingly leveraged by debt, trade payables and director-linked liabilities.
The MPGS Concentration: A Currency Play?
Payaza’s top-line growth is almost entirely tethered to a single product: the Mastercard Payments Gateway Solution (MPGS).
The 98% Factor: MPGS accounted for 98.3% of the firm’s ₦28.78 billion total revenue in 2025.
FX Tailwinds: This revenue is derived from processing international transactions in US Dollars. When translated into a volatile Naira, the “functional currency” gains appear outsized, suggesting the firm’s growth is as much a factor of currency translation as it is transaction volume.
The Risk: Analysts warn that such extreme concentration leaves the firm vulnerable to changes in Mastercard’s fee structures or a sustained appreciation of the Naira, which could shrink the reported top line. Payaza reported an exchange loss of ₦1.7 billion in 2025 from appreciation in the US Dollar exchange rate from N1,549/$1 in January 2025 to N1,440 to US$1 in December 2025.
Balance Sheet Pressure: Payables and Director Loans
As Payaza seeks ₦50 billion from the public market, its existing liabilities are ballooning:
Trade Payables: Short-term obligations to vendors and partners jumped 435% to ₦49.67 billion, up from ₦9.27 billion in 2024. Trade payables primarily represent amounts owed to merchants for transactions processed through the Company’s
payment gateway.
Director Leverage: The firm remains indebted to its own leadership, with ₦2.5 billion currently owed to directors. While these loans are interest-free and unsecured, they remain “repayable on demand,” presenting a potential liquidity risk.
Borrowing Costs and the ₦32bn “PAC” Pivot
The most striking feature of the 2025 report is the explosive growth in finance charges and a massive, newly formed investment portfolio.
Interest Surge: Finance costs skyrocketed by 847% to ₦6.75 billion, reflecting the aggressive cost of capital in Nigeria’s current high-interest-rate environment (MPR at 26.5%).
Strategic Placement: Payaza reported a ₦31.9 billion “strategic investment” with PAC Capital. The firm described this as a short-term placement of surplus liquidity into “high-yield opportunities” within domestic commodity and financial markets—a ₦32bn jump from zero just a year prior.
MasterCard Payment Gateway Solution (MPGS) partners like Payaza typically earn fees through commissions based on transaction processing.
For merchant-facing fees on MasterCard transactions, industry examples show gateway fees usually range around 1.5% to 2.5% per transaction. Part of this fee is shared with payment gateway partners, acquirers, and banks.
Payment gateways sometimes pay partners a percentage of these fees or a set commission or margin based on transaction volume processed via the MasterCard gateway.
There is no clear breakdown about the types of international transactions Payaza claims it is processing through the MPGS.
Payaza is owned by four individuals – Seyi Ebenezer (70% stake), Philips Akinyele (15%), Tochukwu Ekwonna (10%), and Tolulope Atomori (5%).
The firm is a payment service provider with a merchant-enabling payment gateway which facilitates transactions for business through various payment methods, including card payments (debit or credit), bulk/single payment, USSD, QR codes, virtual accounts, and mobile money.
The 4-year old company faces intense competition in the fintech payments space from more established competitors such as Flutterwave, Paystack, Remita, Interswitch, and GTPay.
