Paga to offer tokenized bonds and real estate on Sui blockchain

Nigerian fintech Paga will offer tokenized bonds, real estate, and high-yield dollar accounts to its users through a partnership with the Sui blockchain, the company announced on 7 May at the Sui Live event in Miami.

The move positions Paga, which has processed $42 billion in payments since its 2009 founding, to become a conduit for tokenized real-world assets across Africa, where 57 per cent of adults lack a bank account. Paga handled $11 billion in payment volume in 2025 across 169 million transactions and is currently processing $1.5 billion per month, making it one of the largest non-bank payment processors on the continent.

“These are the walls of the cage, and until we tear them down, financial freedom on this continent is incomplete,” Paga founder and Group CEO Tayo Oviosu said at the event. “We found that partner: Paga and Sui.”

The partnership will issue a suite of products built on $USDsui, Sui’s dollar stablecoin that launched on 4 May. Paga users will gain access to crypto on-ramps and off-ramps, blockchain-powered cross-border transfers, and tokenized real-world assets including real estate, bonds, and solar energy projects. Oviosu described Africa as “the single largest financial greenfield market in the world” and characterised Paga’s $42 billion volume in personal terms: “school fees paid, salaries received, grandmother receiving money from her son in the city.”

The African fintech blockchain shift

Paga is the latest major African payments firm to anchor its product roadmap to a public blockchain. Flutterwave, a rival Nigerian processor, partnered with Polygon in October 2025 to add on-chain settlement to its merchant network. Paystack, which Stripe acquired in 2020, restructured into The Stack Group with an expanded blockchain remit that includes stablecoin payouts for businesses. The global market for tokenized real-world assets surpassed $30 billion this year, growing roughly 1,000 per cent in two years.

Sui, a layer-1 blockchain developed by Mysten Labs and backed by a16z, targets institutional and consumer-grade tokenized assets. Its $USDsui stablecoin settles at sub-second finality with transaction costs below one cent, making it viable for the high-volume, low-value payment flows that define African consumer fintech. Sui’s total value locked stood at roughly $1.8 billion as of early May, placing it among the top ten layer-1 networks by that measure.

The announcement follows regulatory movement. On 31 March, the Central Bank of Nigeria admitted both Flutterwave and Paystack into its anti-money-laundering supervisory programme for virtual asset service providers, the first formal recognition of crypto-native fintechs by the country’s banking regulator. Paga has not disclosed whether it has applied to the same programme.

The stablecoin infrastructure behind Paga’s offering comes from Bridge, the US crypto infrastructure firm that Stripe acquired for $1.1 billion in 2025. Bridge issues the $USDsui stablecoin on Sui’s network. Stripe was an early Paga investor and the two firms share board-level ties.

Tokenization meets the unbanked

Paga’s push into tokenized assets differs from institutional tokenization projects, such as BlackRock’s BUIDL fund on Ethereum, that dominate current market volumes. Those products serve accredited investors and institutions. Paga’s offering is aimed at retail users who sit outside the banking system, targeting a population Oviosu called “the single largest financial greenfield market in the world.”

The product suite does not require users to hold or trade volatile crypto assets. The high-yield dollar accounts use $USDsui as settlement infrastructure, but the user experience abstracts the blockchain layer, similar to how Flutterwave and Paystack embedded card and bank payment rails without exposing consumers to underlying settlement mechanics.

For Nigerian users, dollar-denominated yield products hedge against naira depreciation. The currency has lost more than 70 per cent of its value against the dollar since the Central Bank of Nigeria floated it in mid-2023, eroding household savings and making dollar-linked instruments a sought-after store of value. Tokenized bonds and real estate extend that logic: they carry intrinsic yield rather than pure currency exposure. The solar energy projects add a tangible asset class tied to infrastructure rather than financial markets.

What is still unknown

Paga has not published a launch timeline for the tokenized products, nor has it disclosed the yield rate on the dollar accounts or the minimum investment thresholds for tokenized bonds and real estate. The regulatory pathway is also unresolved. While Flutterwave and Paystack secured CBN programme admission, Paga’s application status is not public, and no Nigerian securities regulator has issued a formal framework for tokenized real estate or bond offerings on public blockchains.

The partnership is the first major product announcement since Oviosu transitioned from CEO to Group CEO in April, a move that signalled a shift toward group-level strategy across Paga’s expanding markets. He gave no timeline for the Sui-built products but described the deal as the start of a broader push. The question now is whether Nigerian regulators move fast enough to meet the fintechs at the gate.