Migrating to PaygOps: Easier than Building In-House or Staying Stuck

When the operations and loan management system that helped you scale starts holding you back

Growth exposes friction. The tools that once helped you get to scale can start limiting you: rising platform costs, inflexible workflows, difficulty sharing data, and vendor dependencies. Many distributors and lenders find themselves at a crossroads:

• Staying on their legacy platform, which is increasingly rigid and expensive

• Maintaining a growing in-house system, which requires constant attention and resources

• Or migrating to a system that actually works for their growth

Some teams even revert to spreadsheets because they can’t afford legacy systems, which is a costly and risky solution for data sharing, investor due diligence, or financing.

The truth is: teams don’t leave their platform because it fails — they leave because it starts constraining them. In today's environment: migration is no longer the risky part, staying stuck is. Lock-in slows decisions, complicates investor due diligence, and keeps your team from scaling. 

Developed by Masunga, PaygOps has guided multiple organisations through migrations — from rigid legacy platforms to in-house systems — helping them move efficiently and strategically while minimizing disruption. PaygOps has supported multiple organizations migrating away from legacy platforms and in-house systems, helping them move efficiently, with minimal disruption, and with a clear operational payoff.

Common pains we hear from legacy-platform users

Across the board, the same themes come up repeatedly in conversations with asset-based distributors who started on early PAYGo and loan management platforms:

• Pricing that scales faster than portfolios: Fixed or prepaid annual pricing leaves little room to adapt as portfolios fluctuate.

• Limited ability to customise workflows: Core processes are often rigid, forcing teams to adapt their operations to the software

• Locked-in data structures and reporting: Exporting clean, usable data for investors, or internal analysis is difficult or incomplete.

• Investor, audit & fraud risk: In-house and legacy systems often lack strong traceability, forcing costly audits and raising concerns about data integrity and fraud

• Dependency on vendor timelines: Product improvements, feature requests, or integrations depend on external roadmaps.

• Poor interoperability: Integrating with payment providers, ERPs, device manufacturers, or data verification and financing platforms (e.g. Odyssey, Prospect) is often complex or unsupported.

• Fear of disruption: Migration feels risky with potential operational downtime, data loss, or overwhelmed teams.

“Should we just build this ourselves?” — the in-house temptation

When legacy platforms start limiting growth, the in-house option feels like the obvious alternative. Some teams consider building in-house for understandable reasons: control, customisation, and independence. With recent advances in AI, it’s tempting to assume lightweight, AI-driven tools can replace SaaS platforms altogether. While AI is powerful, it doesn’t replace tested infrastructure, auditability, security, or years of experience.

What teams often underestimate:

— Engineering and product maintenance never stops

— Internal systems’ bespoke data models are difficult to audit, which complicates investors' due diligence and consequently limits access to investment.

— Knowledge concentrates in a few individuals

— Core business focus shifts away from customers and scale

Over time, in-house systems create a different kind of lock-in — one that’s harder to unwind, harder to explain to partners, harder for investors to trust, and harder to finance against.

The strongest teams don’t ask “build or buy?”. They ask: “What infrastructure should we absolutely not be rebuilding ourselves?”. That’s where migration re-enters the conversation.

The myth that “migration is too hard”

Migration has a reputation problem. Many teams assume it will be technically complex, slow, and disruptive. Our experience shows the opposite.

Most migration failures are process failures, not technical ones. They happen when data is poorly understood or expectations aren’t aligned. Masunga has supported multiple real migrations from both legacy platforms and in-house systems. Across these projects, a few lessons repeat:

➡️ Migration works best when treated as a structured process, not a one-off data dump

➡️ Trial runs and validation matter more than speed

➡️ Close collaboration between technical, operational, and field teams is critical.

This is exactly what we saw with Kazang Solar (Azuri Technologies Distributor), who migrated from a long-standing in-house system. Their migration involved several test imports, careful data validation, and close collaboration between teams. The final migration went smoothly because the process had been rehearsed and refined. As Kazang Solar team advised:

“Recognise that it is not just a technical process, but also requires the involvement of people with a deep understanding of what happens at the call centre, in the field and everywhere that the platform touches.”

Been there, done that: Why organisations migrate to Masunga products

What makes PaygOps migrations different

Migration is not an afterthought at Masunga It’s a capability built into both our  product, PaygOps,  and the team.

✅ Proven migration tooling

Our Bulk upload and data import tools allow large datasets — customers, contracts, repayment histories — to be migrated efficiently, significantly reducing manual effort and error risk.

✅ Structured migration playbooks

Each migration follows a clear, phased approach: data preparation, validation, parallel testing, and controlled go-live.

✅ Dedicated migration support

Teams don’t migrate alone. PaygOps actively supports planning, execution, and troubleshooting throughout the process.

✅ Open API documentation

PaygOps provides full access to its API documentation, enabling:

• Seamless integration with existing third-party tools

• Partial or phased migrations

• Coexistence with internal systems during transition

• Better alignment with existing tech stacks and ecosystems

This flexibility often allows teams to migrate part of their operations first, reducing risk and building confidence before fully switching.

Switching is already happening

Migration away from legacy platforms and from in-house systems is no longer the exception. These are some recent examples:

Tierra Grata

Migrated from Angaza to PaygOps to gain greater operational flexibility to support their community-led energy model in remote rural Colombia. PaygOps enabled customised KYC and issue-tracking forms in Spanish, closer customer follow-up through integrated ticketing, and workflows adapted to their operational realities.

“From our point of view, the migration process was somehow complex, due to the amount of client contracts that we had, while trying to put together the information and make it fit. However, the PaygOps team has been very attentive and has brought many differential factors to the table.” - Luis Castellanos, Project & Operations Coordinator at Tierra Grata (see full story)

Kazang Solar

As previously mentioned, Kazang Solar adopted PaygOps to replace a fragmented mix of internal tools, spreadsheets, and support systems that were slowing operations and creating silos. By consolidating customer management, payments, and call-centre workflows into one platform, the team significantly improved agent productivity, payment handling, and visibility across operations. 

“PaygOps improved our overall productivity as we are now using one system for the majority of our assigned tasks, hence we have undivided attention that would come from using multiple systems. This has given us more time to offer quality service to our customers.” Paul Pongolani, Assistant Manager - Customer Service at Kazang Solar (see full story)

A Third Path: PaygOps Community Edition — Ownership Without Rebuilding

For teams struggling with legacy platforms or considering in-house builds, there’s often a false choice: buy a SaaS with limited control, or build everything yourself from scratch. PaygOps Community Edition, our upcoming open-source platform, opens a third path: full operational ownership and a robust foundation without starting from zero.

PaygOps Community Edition is a production-ready, self-hosted version of PaygOps that provides the core building blocks for asset finance and lending operations. It includes client and contract management, payments tracking, inventory management, configurable workflows, and full API access. This allows teams to own their data, integrate with existing tools, and adapt processes to their realities, while avoiding the long timelines and risk of developing a proprietary platform.

In short, it delivers the control of in-house systems on top of a proven foundation, helping organisations move away from fragile spreadsheets or rigid platforms and toward scalable, auditable, investment-ready operations.

Migration as a Strategic Reset, not Disruption

The most successful migrations we’ve seen use the transition as a reset. The teams don’t migrate just to “replicate what they had before.” They’re moments to clean up data, revisit workflows, align reporting with stakeholders, and reduce long-term technical debt, all while unlocking PayOps' capabilities that legacy platforms or in-house systems can’t match.

• Custom Workflows + A/B testing: Custom Workflows, custom User Journeys, and Task System don’t just add flexibility, they allow teams to A/B test operational changes (e.g. onboarding, collections steps or agent processes) without duplicating development work. This is rarely practical with in-house or legacy platforms and is critical for performance optimisation.

• AI as a migration accelerator: PaygOps includes AI-powered tools that quickly create custom offers and KYC forms, or replicate old processes from a simple prompt. Tasks that took weeks now take minutes, providing ongoing benefits after migration.

• Immediate and lasting impact: Field teams capture better data, ops teams resolve issues faster, and managers gain full visibility with flexible reporting. 

• Cost advantage: Beyond productivity gains, migration delivers lower long-term operating costs. Compared to in-house development and other platforms with rigid pricing, PaygOps offers growth-friendly pricing that scales with portfolios, improving ROI over time.

Bottom line: Migration becomes strategic leverage, not disruption, permanently boosting efficiency, adaptability, and scale.

Conclusion: Don’t Let Legacy or In-House Lock You In

More teams are reassessing their foundations, not because their platforms failed, but because they outgrew them. Staying on rigid legacy systems or over-investing in in-house builds isn’t neutral; it’s a drain on time, capital, and focus. 

One of the biggest mistakes teams can make at this stage is letting past investment dictate future decisions. Continuing to invest simply because so much has already been invested creates unnecessary complexity. Clinging to sunk costs delays change, even when switching would reduce operating overhead, simplify audits, and unlock growth.

In resource-constrained environments, the real danger isn’t a lack of control — it’s misallocated focus. Migration isn’t risky; staying stuck is. With PaygOps, moving your operations is fast, controlled, and strategically transformative. It’s an opportunity to streamline processes and equip your teams with modern tools — from AI-assisted forms to custom workflows — that turn operational friction into efficiency.

Stop managing constraints. Start running your business. Explore how PaygOps can help you migrate, scale, and reclaim control. Contact us NOW