Nigerian Retail-tech Startup Alerzo Acquires Fintech Shago Payments

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Nigerian Retail-tech Startup Alerzo Acquires Fintech Shago Payments
Nigerian Retail-tech Startup Alerzo Acquires Fintech Shago Payments

Alerzo, a Nigerian retail-tech startup, has acquired Shago Payments, a fintech company, to expand on its growth.

With Shago’s integration into AlerzoPay, the company’s payments arm, Alerzo now provides informal retail stores with a portfolio of new digital services such as mobile airtime top-up, bill payments, and peer-to-peer transfers.

Alerzo Founder Adewale Opaleye said he created the company to meet a core need that his mother, a businesswoman, had at the time.

“I started Alerzo to help my mom, a single mother who ran two informal retail stores to support me and my three siblings,” he said. “Before Alerzo, she had to close her shop and travel for hours to buy inventory to stay in business.”

Nigerian Retail-tech Startup Alerzo Acquires Fintech Shago Payments

Opaleye added that retail store operators, particularly women, often fall victims to thefts because people know they carry cash and he “wanted to apply what I learned in China to make life better for working mothers in Nigeria.”

Alerzo is an all-in-one technology and services platform that transforms how Nigeria’s informal retail stores operate.

Retailers can order stock, get it delivered quickly, receive and make cashless payments, and track store profitability better.

Alerzo currently works with more than 150,000 informal retail stores.