Tim Draper Invests in Nigeria’s Mobile Payment Service, Paga

Today, Pagatech announced that they have received investment from Tim Draper, a renowned Venture Capitalist based in the United States.

Mr. Draper, who is the Founder and a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, is known for investing in early stage companies and in emerging markets.

Some of the successes under his belt include investments in Skype, Baidu (Chinese search engine), and Hotmail (acquired by Microsoft).

According to the Paga blog,

Today, we announced the investment of Tim Draper in our company! Tim, who is the Founder and a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, is known for investing in early stage companies and in emerging markets. Some of the successes under his belt include investments in Skype, Baidu (Chinese search engine), and Hotmail (acquired by Microsoft).

Speaking about his investment in Paga, Draper said “My decision to make this personal investment is premised on the simple fact that I believe in the bold vision of the Paga team and I trust in their ability to execute. Paga is a great innovation which will simplify life for millions of people in Nigeria and beyond. I look forward to the company being a major African success story that serves as an example for many more to come.”

Tayo Oviosu, Founder and CEO of Paga, added: “We are receiving significant attention from investors both local and international, but I must say that we are quite fortunate to have Mr. Draper as an investor in Paga. His support and advice has been invaluable towards getting us to where we are today, and we continue to enjoy the access he provides to an extensive network of business partners around the world.”

Tim launched the DFJ Global Network, an international network of early-stage venture capital funds with offices in over 30 cities around the globe. He also founded or co-founded DFJ ePlanet (global), Draper Fisher Jurvetson Gotham (NYC), Zone Ventures (LA), Epic Ventures (Salt Lake City),  Draper Atlantic (Reston), Draper Triangle (Pittsburg), Timberline Ventures (Portland), Polaris Fund (Anchorage), DFJ Frontier (Sacramento and Santa Barbara), DFJ Vina Capital (Vietnam), and DFJ DragonFund (Shanghai).

Pagatech’s mobile payment service, Paga has been in pilot testing mode since late September 2010 and was launched in February 2011 after receiving approval from the Central Bank of Nigeria.

The mobile payment service allows people to use their cash to pay bills, purchase recharge cards, transfer money, etc via their mobile phones.

Last week, Paga crossed 500 users of the mobile payment service.

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