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Adoption of a standardised language, metrics and methods has the potential to exponentially reduce friction around assessing the performance of companies or portfolios of customers whether for due diligence, operational management, benchmarking or evaluation. To this end, GOGLA, with support of a taskforce of experts and practitioners and with support from partners Paygowise and MFR has updated the PAYGo PERFORM KPIs to focus on a core set of indicators centered around Repayment Rates and Customer Ownership Rates. You can find an overview of the KPIS and a technical guide for adoption on the website.
PAYGo companies operate at the intersection of energy access, consumer finance, and technology. This hybridity has driven innovation but also fragmentation in how performance is tracked.
Historically, companies have used different definitions for core metrics such as repayment rates, defaults, write-offs, and customer outcomes. Even when metrics share the same name, their underlying calculations often differ. For example, repayment performance may be measured at different time horizons, include or exclude deposits, or treat rescheduling and prepayments inconsistently.
The result is a lack of comparability.
For investors, this creates friction. Assessing portfolio quality or benchmarking companies requires time-consuming adjustments and assumptions. For companies, it limits their ability to benchmark against peers or demonstrate performance credibly. For the industry, it obscures the true narrative of impact and financial sustainability.
In short, the sector’s growth is hampered by fragmented data; further maturity and fresh capital will only be unlocked with standardisation.
“Evaluating companies is difficult due to the variety of KPIs and uncertainty in how they are calculated. A common standard for performance with a clear method would help us speed up agreements”
Eric de Moudt, CEO – African Frontier Capital
The PAYGo PERFORM initiative, launched in 2018, was built to address exactly this problem: creating a common language for performance.
Its objectives are improving transparency, enabling benchmarking, driving better decisions, and unlocking investment.
PAYGo remains a capital-intensive business. Companies must finance assets upfront and recover revenues over time, often in challenging operating environments. Access to affordable, long-term capital is therefore essential.
Standardised KPIs directly address one of the biggest barriers to investment: uncertainty.
By aligning on definitions and methodologies, the new framework allows investors to compare companies on a like-for-like basis. Metrics such as Repayment Rate at 2x contract term provide a consistent proxy for ultimate portfolio outcomes independent of company-specific accounting practices.
This comparability reduces due diligence costs, improves risk assessment, and increases confidence. Over time, it can translate into greater capital flows and more favourable financing terms.
Understanding repayment behaviour is fundamental to sustainability. The updated KPIs introduce a more rigorous and actionable approach to this challenge.
Together, these tools allow companies to move from reactive to proactive management by helping them identify underperformance early and adjust strategies.
One of the most important contributions of the updated framework is its explicit integration of customer outcomes into performance measurement.
The introduction of Customer Ownership Rate—the proportion of customers who fully repay and own their product—bridges the gap between operational metrics and social impact.
This is critical.
Customer ownership is not just a feel-good indicator. It reflects:
By standardising how ownership is measured, the industry can better assess whether it is delivering on its promise of not just selling products but enabling lasting value for customers.
What makes the PAYGo PERFORM KPIs particularly impactful is not just the individual metrics, but the system they create.
They introduce:
This transforms data into a shared language.
For investors, it enables rapid due diligence, outsourced reporting and verification, receivables finance and back-up servicing, portfolio benchmarking and trend analysis across markets. For companies, it provides actionable insights and performance diagnostics.
For the industry, it creates a credible, unified narrative.
The PAYGo PERFORM Monitor data already demonstrates the potential of this approach. By aggregating standardised data, it offers reliable benchmarks and market trends.
Defining standards is only the first step. Their value depends entirely on adoption.
For Investors
Investors play a critical role in driving adoption.
By requesting and prioritising standardised reporting, they can:
Crucially, using standard KPIs reduces reliance on bespoke analyses, enabling scale.
For Companies
Adopting the new KPIs is not just about compliance – it is about competitiveness and easing access to capital. Leading companies have already demonstrated their ability to report against the standardised KPIs through the PAYGo PERFORM Monitor. Companies that align with PAYGo PERFORM can:
In a market where capital is selective, transparency becomes a differentiator.
A small set of standardised KPIs that can be used to report to the majority of sector stakeholders will in particular benefit smaller and locally-owned companies that are more likely to struggle with the immense requirements of reporting against a multiplicity of slightly different indicators. They will in particular benefit if key ecosystem service providers such as data platforms and TA providers also adopt the PAYGo PERFORM KPIs.
For CRMs and data platforms
PAYGo CRMs and data service providers have a key role to play in facilitating standardisation by adopting standards and closely following definitions and calculation guidance. As harmonisation of indicators improves, platforms that enable companies to report effortlessly against the standard KPIs will have a competitive advantage over those that don’t.
For grant and TA providers
Local and earlier stage companies will need support to help them build the data analysis and reporting capability to adopt the KPIs and systematically report. These companies will be among the main beneficiaries of standardisation as they will only need to report against a small set of standardised KPIs, rather than a plethora of slightly different indicators, specific to a multitude of different partners.
For the Sector
At a systemic level, widespread adoption creates network effects.
The more we all collectively report using the same standards, the more powerful benchmarking becomes. The more robust the data, the more credible the sector appears. The more credible the sector, the more capital it attracts.
This virtuous cycle depends on collective action.
Adoption is not without challenges. Companies may face data system constraints or worry about exposing performance. Investors may need to adapt existing frameworks. But the KPIs have been designed with these realities in mind.
They build on years of industry consultation, incorporate existing best practices, and focus on metrics that are both meaningful and practical. Flexibility remains where needed, but the core definitions are clear.
Continued fragmentation is far more costly.
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