Nigerians are still mad at PayPal but their startups need dollars
Nigerians may resent PayPal, but with the naira under pressure, startups like Paga are prioritising global reach and dollar inflows.
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After nearly two decades of excluding Nigerians from its platform, PayPal is back, this time through a partnership with Nigerian fintech Paga. The partnership allows Paga users to link their wallets to PayPal accounts and withdraw funds in naira. Businesses are not left out either.<br />
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“The next phase is opening this up fully on our merchant business accounts, so businesses can accept PayPal directly on our gateways and handle larger business-sized transactions,” Paga CEO Tayo Oviosu told TechCabal.<br />
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On the surface, the announcement appears to be a straightforward expansion play. Underneath it, however, sits a more complicated mix of history, sentiment, and economic necessity.<br />
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Public reaction to the partnership has been mixed. Older millennials, particularly freelancers, developers, and online merchants, remember a time when PayPal represented the most reliable way to get paid by foreign clients, only for Nigerians to be abruptly locked out. <br />
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That decision forced many into often unreliable workarounds, dependence on middlemen, or, in some cases, losing out on opportunities altogether. That memory still stings.<br />
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But there is also a younger demographic — digital natives who have little or no recollection of that period. For them, global access has always felt more normal, thanks to the work done by local fintechs like Flutterwave, Paystack, and, more recently, Grey and Raenest. To this group, PayPal is just another payment option, not a symbol of exclusion.<br />
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This generational split matters because while sentiment around PayPal is real, it is uneven and often loudest among people who are no longer representative of the fastest-growing segment of Nigeria’s digital economy. The timing of PayPal’s return is also telling.<br />
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The fintech is re-entering the market just as digital payments and eCommerce activity across Africa is accelerating. According to the World Bank, digital payments have been one of the fastest-growing segments of financial services in sub-Saharan Africa, while GSM...
