Payxy has introduced Oloja, a digital commerce storefront platform designed specifically for African small businesses, allowing merchants to set up online stores in under three minutes with no developer assistance and no setup fees.
The platform gives sellers access to five integrated tools from a single dashboard: payment collection, a customisable digital storefront, customer experience management, business operations tools, and real-time business intelligence.
Nigeria is home to more than 37 million micro, small, and medium enterprises that collectively employ the largest share of the country's workforce and contribute an estimated 48 percent of GDP. Despite their economic significance, most digital commerce tools available to Nigerian sellers were originally built for other markets and later adapted for local use.
Oloja's core premise is that these businesses deserve infrastructure built around their specific needs from the ground up, rather than retrofitted solutions. A seller can sign up, generate a payment link, build a storefront, list products, and begin selling within a single session.
The platform was engineered to eliminate common barriers to entry. Merchants do not need technical skills or upfront capital to establish an online presence. Payments, inventory tracking, and customer follow-ups — tasks that many small business owners currently manage through informal methods such as bank transfers, notebooks, or WhatsApp messages — are consolidated into one system.
Oloja's argument is that Nigerian merchants have been operating on infrastructure never designed for them. Rather than asking sellers to change how they work, the platform aims to meet them where they already are while providing more effective tools.
For the fashion retailer in Yaba, the food vendor in Wuse Market, or the gadget seller in Apapa managing orders from a phone, Oloja represents an attempt to close the gap between the digital capabilities available to large enterprises and those accessible to micro-businesses that form the backbone of Nigeria's commercial activity.
