Aziz Yérima
Beninese fintech entrepreneur based in Dakar and co-founder of PayDunya, a digital payments platform built for Francophone Africa. His work focuses on making it easier for African businesses to accept, send and manage payments across mobile money, cards and bank channels.
In many African markets, commerce still runs on cash and fragmented payment systems. For small businesses selling online or across borders, accepting money from customers in different countries and currencies is often slow, expensive and complex.
From this reality, Aziz Yérima and his co-founders built PayDunya, a payments gateway focused on Francophone Africa. The platform helps businesses collect and disburse funds from mobile money wallets, cards and other channels through one interface, with tools designed for local entrepreneurs as well as large enterprises.
The bet is simple: if African merchants can move money easily and securely online, they can participate fully in the digital economy — not only as consumers, but as builders.
Key Numbers
Selected public operating data for PayDunya.
Figures based on public information shared in PayDunya and Peach Payments communications and fintech media profiles.
The Story
From a student project to Francophone payment rails.
The first version of PayDunya’s story starts in 2013, when Aziz Yérima was a student working with a group of women entrepreneurs in Pikine, Senegal. Their cereals business needed an online sales channel, but the team quickly hit a barrier: no suitable way to accept payments from customers.
Cards were rare, international platforms did not support local businesses properly, and mobile money was fragmented. The problem was clear — African merchants needed a payment layer adapted to their reality, not a copy of foreign models.
In 2014, Yérima began working on a prototype to connect websites to local payment methods. One year later, in 2015, he and fellow ESMT Dakar students co-founded PayDunya with a small amount of bootstrap capital.
The company focused on helping businesses send and receive payments across mobile money wallets, cards and bank channels in West Africa, with built-in tools for invoicing, subscriptions and bulk payouts.
Ventures
Platforms and initiatives led by Aziz Yérima.
PayDunya
Co-founder and Chief Executive OfficerDakar-based payment gateway that helps African businesses accept and send money online. PayDunya connects websites and apps to mobile money, cards and other channels, and provides tools for invoicing, subscriptions and bulk payouts.
SEN FINTECH Association
PresidentIndustry association bringing together fintech stakeholders in Senegal. The platform represents members with regulators and partners, and contributes to building a more structured fintech ecosystem.
Contribution to Africa
What changes because PayDunya exists.
Direct Impact
Structural Impact
- Francophone rails: PayDunya helps close the infrastructure gap between English-speaking and French-speaking markets in Africa.
- Locally designed products: Features respond to how African merchants actually sell — online, on social media and via agents.
- Stronger ecosystem: Through SEN FINTECH and partnerships, Yérima contributes to a more coordinated fintech landscape in Senegal and beyond.
Impact lens
PayDunya shows how a focused payments gateway can become critical infrastructure: when the rails are reliable and adapted to local realities, more entrepreneurs can build sustainable digital businesses.
Signal
Profiles and interviews on PayDunya and Aziz Yérima from regional tech and business media, including:
• WeAreTech Africa – profile on Benin’s Aziz Yérima and PayDunya.
• Empower Africa – African Changemaker profile.
• Early-stage interviews and features on PayDunya’s origins and vision.
• Inclusion Times and similar outlets on PayDunya’s regional expansion in West Africa.
• Apis Partners, Peach Payments and fintech press releases on the PayDunya–Peach Payments transaction and operating metrics.
Data reviewed December 2025.
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