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Opay Partners With Mastercard To Enable Customers Transact Using Cards Linked To Opay Wallet

May 19, 2022

Mastercard and fintech giant OPay have today announced a strategic partnership, which marks a significant boost for wider financial inclusion and economic prosperity by opening up digital commerce to millions of people across Middle East and Africa.

“As the leading fintech in the Middle East and Africa, we are delighted to be partnering with Mastercard as we continue on our journey to promote financial inclusion, helping to open up the global economy to more consumers and businesses across Middle East and Africa,” Yahui Zhou, CEO of OPay, said.

Here’s How The Partnership Will Work

The collaboration enables OPay consumers and merchants in the region, which includes Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Pakistan, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates, to interact with brands and businesses anywhere in the world, courtesy of a Mastercard virtual payment solution linked to the OPay eWallet.

This is the most recent milestone in Mastercard’s emerging market strategy, in which the technology company collaborates with growing Fintechs such as OPay to expand access to digital payments, enable multiple lifestyle services, create new pathways to financial inclusion, and support the next generation of superapps. Consumers are increasingly seeking streamlined user experiences on a single platform that facilitates interactions for a variety of day-to-day tasks, such as sending and receiving money, ordering meals and groceries, arranging transportation, lending, investing, and putting products for sale.

In the initial phase of this agreement, OPay consumers will be able to shop at well-known global companies for leisure, travel, lodging, entertainment streaming services, and more using the Mastercard virtual payment solution linked to their OPay wallets. The service is accessible regardless of the customer’s bank account status. It also enables small businesses to acquire from international vendors and pay via a secure virtual payment service.

“At Mastercard, our innovation strategy is rooted in partnerships to support inclusion at scale. Our partnership with OPay demonstrates our commitment to supporting payments providers across the world to create an interconnected global payments ecosystem that benefits an array of consumers with unique needs,” Amnah Ajmal, Executive Vice President for Market Development, Mastercard EEMEA, said.

Opay Continues To Grow

Since it began operations in 2018, OPay’s active user base has expanded to 15 million across dozens of markets. On average, the organization conducts millions of transactions per day. In Nigeria, where OPay holds a considerable market share, customers have saved billions of dollars over the past four years through credit-linked savings accounts linked to their mobile wallets and small loans from lenders that use its platform.

Plans are in place to offer OPay services in other markets within the next three to five years, thereby considerably accelerating the expansion of digital inclusion and digital commerce and expanding OPay user participation in the global economy.

Mastercard has declared a global commitment to financial inclusion, pledging to integrate 1 billion people and 50 million micro and small companies into the digital economy by 2025, with a focus on 25 million women entrepreneurs.

Nigeria’s Autochek Expands To North Africa, Acquires Three-year-old Kifal Auto

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard. You can book a session and speak with him using the link: https://insightsbyexperts.com/view_expert/charles-rapulu-udoh

Barely A Year After Launch, Opay Emerges Best POS Service Provider In Egypt

February 1, 2022

OPay, Egypt ’s and Africa’s largest fintech one-stop mobile-based payment and collection platform, has won the ‘Best New Point-Of-Sale (POS) Payment Service Provider’ award from the ‘Global Economics’ institution.

“We are proud with the winning of the 2021 Best New Point-Of-Sale Payment Service Provider award from ‘The Global Economics’ institution. This award reflects the commitment of our dedicated team of experts in digital and technological sectors to build a brand that wins the confidence of our partners and customers,” Mahmoud Khedr, the company’s Director of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships, said at an event in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Global Economics is a British organisation that specializes in delivering extensive performance analysis of corporations in a variety of financial and commercial sectors across the globe.

After a fierce competition with major financial services companies in the Egyptian market, OPay was awarded the prize. The award comes on the heels of the company’s strategic plans to distribute tens of thousands of points of sale and expand its vendor and retailer network across all of Egypt’s governorates.

Opay Grows In Egypt By Leaps And Bounds A Year After Launch

Since launching operations in Egypt last year, OPay has experienced significant growth in the Egyptian market, as the company aims to deliver all types of electronic services and new digital payment solutions to its consumers in Egypt and Africa.

Mr. Khedr stressed that the firm is “working towards offering the greatest service possible to its partners and customers,” in addition to its unwavering commitment to carrying out its ambitious ambitions to provide the most cutting-edge fintech and digital payments services and solutions.

OPay Egypt and North Africa has recently formed a number of successful collaborations in the fields of electronic payments and banking.

It recently signed an MoU with both Banque Misr and the National Bank of Egypt (NBE), under which the company will provide electronic payment and collection services via the internet to merchants and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as well as the banks’ partners by accepting all types of collections via the internet using all types of banking cards, as well as QR code and R2P (Request To Pay) services.

Both banks’ credit card holders will be able to use the company’s installment services.

After receiving approval from Egypt’s Central Bank, OPay also signed an agreement with The Egyptian Company for Cards to issue 200,000 smart prepaid cards for individuals and businesses (CBE).

Opay Egypt POS Opay Egypt POS

Nigerian Startup For Foreign Stock Markets Bamboo Lands $15m In Series A Led By Tiger Global

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer

Nigeria’s OPay Hauls Largest Investment Round by African Startup

August 24, 2021

Nigeria-based fintech OPay has secured $400-million during a new funding round left by SoftBank Vision Fund, Japanese conglomerate SoftBank’s venture capital arm. According to sources, this latest funding round brings total investments into OPay to $570-million and sees the payment platform’s value surge to $2-billion. OPay’s latent funding and the capital amassed marks the single largest investment round secured by an African-based startup and marks the first investment in a startup on the continent by SoftBank Vision Fund.

OPay’s latent funding and the capital amassed marks the single largest investment round secured by an African-based startup and marks the first investment in a startup on the continent by SoftBank Vision Fund.

This latest round by OPay was attended mostly by Asian investors – who have been increasingly looking to invest in African startups. Most notably, these include Sequoia Capital China, DragonBall Capital, Redpoint China, Source Code Capital, SoftBank Ventures Asia, and 3W Capital.

“We want to be the power that helps emerging markets reach faster economic development,” Yahui Zhou, CEO of OPay, was quoted as saying.

OPay operates within a very competitive fintech space in Africa, where other heavyweights like Paga and TeamApt are also pushing to increase their market share as they aim to bring financial services to millions of unbanked people.

Previously OPay, which was founded in 2018, raised two investments in 2019 – $50-million in June and $120-million in a Series B round in November. OPay had to shrink its business’ scope last year as the company shut down its ride-hailing and logistics arms due to Lagos’ ban on motorcycles.

OPay, like many other fintech and mobile money platforms, experienced a boom in growth during the onset of the global pandemic and subsequent lockdowns last year. The value of the company’s gross transactions rose by 4.5 times to over $2-billion in December 2020.

Currently, OPay’s monthly transaction volumes exceed $3-billion, driven by its strong network of 300,000 agents and 5-million registered app users.

The company has set its sights on expansions into other African markets in the future, as well as the Middle East. Previous forays into South Africa and Kenya have proved unsuccessful, although the company has entered the North African market with brick and mortar in Egypt.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

OPay Sounds Positive as Platform Processed $2 Billion in Transactions In December 2020

March 1, 2021

Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Opera, Frode Jacobsen

Smarting from the challenges of Covid-19 and run-ins with some government regulations in some countries, Opera, the software company that owns the widely-used Opera browser and content platform, Opera News and other companies such as fintech platform OPay, has released its results for the fourth quarter of 2020 showing strong results for the quarter with $50.4 million in revenue. That’s an increase of 19% from Q3 when its revenue was $42.4 million. Most of this growth was driven by its search and advertising business which brought in revenue of $48.9m. It has been able to monetize its platform even more because it is growing its users at a breakneck pace – Opera says it added 29 million users in 2020.

The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Opera, Frode Jacobsen, said that “OPay’s revenue is increasing quite rapidly while the company is able to achieve profits right around breakeven despite the growth. We expect this growth to continue as OPay continues to scale in Nigeria and expands to an additional country in Africa.”

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

OPay Eyes North Africa Buoyed by Nigeria Success

December 26, 2020

The Softbank backed multiple payment platform, OPay founded in Nigerian by Opera plans to expand its payments service operations to North Africa early next year after Covid-19 restrictions led to a spike in transactions on its platform. The fintech startup saw the volume of monthly settlements on its platform grow from $363 million in January to $1.4 billion in November as people sought alternative payments services during coronavirus-induced lockdowns, According to the company, there are plans to reach transactions value of about $2 billion by the end of 2020 .The company will leverage its network of 300,000 offline agents to deepen the adoption of its payments service in the next six months. With these encouraging results, the startup plans to venture into the North African market buoyed by its impressive performance in Nigeria. “The process has begun and we will see how the first quarter turns out.”

The Lagos-based startup, which has shareholders including Softbank Group Corp. and China’s Meituan, said it attained financial self-sufficiency in June and still has enough cash in the bank to fund its expansion plans. Previous plans to expand to South Africa and Kenya, after raising $190 million in funding last year, have been put on hold due to the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic. In February, OPay suspended part of its operations including the ride-hailing and the logistics businesses to focus on the payments business. The financial service provider is currently piloting a digital overdraft product for its mobile wallet customers who have short-term funding needs. Users will be able to borrow from 5,000 to 100,000 naira and have a window of 30 days to repay. The overdraft attracts 3% interest for the first seven days and 1% every day after that.

Through the product, which is called CreditMe, “we will be lending to working class people in their mid-20s and 30s, like students and small business owners, who have a source of income,” says the CEO, Akpan. He expects to launch the credit platform in the first quarter subject to approval from the central bank. The mobile-payments company also acquired an international money transfer license last year and plans to partner with WorldRemit to process remittances into Nigeria. New regulations from the central bank are delaying the launch, Akpan said. The service will take off as soon as there is clarity on what operators are allowed to do, he said. OPay currently processes about 80% of bank transfers among mobile money operators in Nigeria and 20% of non-merchant point of sales transactions, Akpan said.

The company is currently exploring partnerships with firms that have complementary services, according to the Managing Director. “We have a large customer base of about seven million and we can offer unique financial products.”

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

After Raising $170m, Nigeria-based Startup Opay Halts All Its Mobility Operations. Here Is What It Means For Mobility Startups In Nigeria

July 3, 2020

For the first time ever, it looks like the mobility market for startups in Nigeria is getting clearer for investors and future mobility startup founders. Opera’s Africa-focused fintech startup, Opay, is giving the first hint about this reality. After several insinuations in the media about Opay’s troubled Super App, the startup has finally come clear on it, declaring that “some of our business units including the ride-hailing services: ORide, OCar as well as our logistics service OExpress will be put on pause.”

For a startup that has secured more than $170 million in funding — $120 million in November, 2019 to add to its $50 million series A round which it raised in June of 2019, backed by Chinese investors— to confront its Nigerian market, this looks like the beginning of an uncertain journey to shore up investors’ confidence, and hopefully not its last throes of death, especially as the startup had poured enormous resources into asset and labour acquisitions and incurred heavy operational costs on its ride-hailing units.

Important to note, however, is the fact that Opay ’s decision to shut down its mobility business units in Nigeria appears rather record-breaking: the startup barely launched its ride-hailing services a year ago; and among the major locally made players in the Nigerian ride-hailing ecosystem — Max.ng; Gokada — it is the first and fastest to shut down its mobility operations, even though it is 12 times more funded than the above-listed mobility startups combined.

“This is due to the harsh business conditions which have affected many Nigerian companies, including ours, during this COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown, and government ban,” the startup noted in a statement.

“Globally, ride-sharing businesses have been heavily impacted by the pandemic. But several months ago, foreseeing this issue, Opay had already taken preemptive steps to restructure our business focus away from rides. It is worthy to note that this final restructuring has minimal impact on Opay as a whole business,” it added.

The picture below charts the perfect story of Opay’s venture into mobility business in Nigeria.

In analysing the possible reasons for the suspension of Opay ’s mobility operations in Nigeria, it is important to note that two factors stand out the most — government ban and COVID-19. While ORide’s launch was assisted by the $50 million funding Opay secured from investors in the second quarter of 2019, Opay was so inspired by the success of its ORide that in the fourth quarter of 2019, it added OCar to its mobility vertical and supported it with a new $120 million fund-raise. Thus within 5 months, the fintech startup had moved twice on the same vertical. However, 8 months after the startup last spread those wings, things began to turn south, signalling that COVID-19 could have played a bigger role in its latest decision, and that the Lagos state government’s policy to ban commercial bike activities on its major highways might have dampened the spirit of both the startup and its investors about committing more funds in the short term in those areas.

“Opay will continue to invest in and grow in the eCommerce space, aligning its customer and business eCommerce units which will continue to operate and grow. We believe a financial platform coupled with goods’ platform will form the future of Nigeria’s technology development,’’ Opay further noted in the statement.

For curious investors and founders in the Nigerian mobility space, Opay’s decision to shut down its operations is only one side of a coin; the success of the remaining players in the ecosystem will help to properly shape the story of innovative disruptions within the African mobility ecosystem as far as Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, is concerned.

However, one thing still remains clear from all these: it is yet unclear if any African startup can make it to the super app level. For now, it looks like Opay would be sticking to its long-time friend — fintech — which has been in operation in Nigeria since 2018. That is, it will be doing what it knows how best to do, even if it means moving a million times on that vertical. Doing this would perhaps position it strategically to mine the opportunities abundant in the Nigerian financial industry, and possibly become a category king in that sector.

“It is important to clarify that ride-sharing businesses have been only one part, and not a major part of Opay’s diversified business in Nigeria,” the startup noted in the statement.

“During the pandemic, we have seen continued demand for our offline mobile agency, and online digital payment, which remain the core of our business. From January to April, 2020 for example, we witnessed a 44% growth of offline and online transaction value in the midst of the pandemic and lockdown,” it further added.

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer

Africa-focused Fintech Startup OPay Raises $120 Million From Chinese Investors

November 18, 2019

This is Africa’s biggest Series B deal of 2019. China is once again drawing out a battle line against leading e-payment platforms in Nigeria. Opay, Opera’s Africa-focused fintech startup has added a new $120 million to its $50 million series A round which it raised in June this year. This $120 million Series B round was backed by Chinese investors. With this investment, we are still returning to the fact that Nigeria has become the epicenter for fintech VC and expansion in Africa.

“Opay will facilitate the people in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya and other African countries with the best fintech ecosystem. We see ourselves as a key contributor to…helping local businesses…thrive from…digital business models,” Opera CEO and OPay Chairman Yahui Zhou, said in a statement.

Here Is The Deal

This latest round of investment was led by investors including Meituan-Dianping, GaoRong, Source Code Capital, Softbank Asia, BAI, Redpoint, IDG Capital, Sequoia China and GSR Ventures.
OPay will use the funds to scale in Nigeria and expand its payments product to Kenya, Ghana and South Africa — Opera’s CFO Frode Jacobsen confirmed to TechCrunch.
Since its $50 million Series A raise, OPay in Nigeria has scaled to 140,000 active agents and $10 million in daily transaction volume, according to company stats.
According to Opera CFO Frode Jacobsen, OPay will deploy the $120 million across Opera’s Africa network. OPay looks to capture volume around bill payments and airtime purchases, but not necessarily as priority.

“That’s not something you do ever day. We want to focus our services on things that have high-frequency usage,” said Jacobsen.

Those include transportation services, food services, and other types of daily activities, he explained. Jacobsen also noted OPay will use the $120 million to enter more countries in Africa than those disclosed.

Startups Are Hurtling To Grab A Market Share In The Growing West African Fintech Ecosystem

It looks like a war has just been declared across West Africa’s technology-backed financial payment systems. Recall Visa’s $200 million investment in Nigeria’s Interwitch, amidst the company’s impending IPO. On its own, e-commerce venture Jumia has recently shifted to digital finance, and WhatsApp is most likely to enter Africa’s fintech ecosystem payments.

2019 Has Been A Great Year For Chinese Investors In Africa

What a year! 2019 for one thing has announced that China is coming for Africa. Opay, fully backed by Chinese investors is already displacing fintechs in Nigeria. Lori Systems, in a newly sealed $30 million deal with Chinese investors is also squaring up to Nigeria’s Kobo360. Another fintech startup PalmPay, backed by Chinese mobile-phone maker Transsion has not only been launched in Nigeria, but is starting its life on a platter of gold after raising a $40 million seed-round from Transsion.

But one thing is clear: Chinese are building from the scratch! They seem not to be making any direct or indirect investment in existing startups founded by Africans. Therefore, it is still far-fetched to lay hands on as many Chinese venture capitalists as possible. There is simply not many out there.

Africa’s 1.2 billion people represent the largest share of the world’s unbanked and underbanked population. This fact makes fintech Africa’s most promising digital sector in the world. But it’s becoming a notably crowded sector where startup attrition and failure will certainly come into play.

A Look At What Opay Does

Located in Lagos and founded by consumer internet company Opera, Opay has built a hefty suite of internet-based commercial products in Nigeria around OPay’s financial utility. These include motorcycle ride-hail app ORide, OFood delivery service, and OLeads SME marketing and advertising vertical.
Not to be overlooked is how OPay’s capital raise moves Opera toward becoming a multi-service commercial internet platform in Africa.
This places OPay and its Opera-supported suite of products on a competitive footing with other ride-hail, food delivery and payments startups across the continent. That means inevitable competition between Opera and Africa’s largest multi-service internet company, Jumia.

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world

Nigeria Based Mobile Solutions GONA Raises Multi-million Dollar Fund For Expansion

August 4, 2019

More Africa-focused startups are raising funds to either expand or grow their businesses this year. Apart from Opay’s recent funding round, GONA, the Chinese startup that offers cashless bus services and payment solutions with a focus on the Nigerian market is the latest to join the bandwagon.

This is remarkable because it shows that the African startup ecosystem is gradually fusing into the global startup ecosystem.

Here Is The Deal

News website, c.m.163.com says the Chinese-led investment came from Crystal Stream Capital, UnityVC and Shaka VC.
According to Liu Xiaojun, the founder and CEO of GONA the round of financing will be used for team building and product technology upgrades.
This new investment will further allow GONA to employ more locals to help develop the product and expand its popularity.

“We will try to employ the best people to help the most Lagosians have a better daily commuting experience,” says co-founder, Noah Gu.

Larry, a partner at ShakaVC, notes that the minibus scene provides more efficient and convenient travel services for hundreds of millions of Africans, and the market potential is huge.
As the first Chinese fund to focus on early African investment in Africa, ShakaVC will support the development of GONA in local resources, experience, and capital.
GONA boasts of thousands of active users and nearly 10,000 transactions every day.

What GONA Does

GONA is a mobile payments platform with primary operations in Lagos.
GONA is enabling cashless payments on ‘informal transit’ public buses in Lagos and is also working to solve the pains of inconvenience in the local travel market. This it is doing by using technical means to improve operational efficiency.

‘‘The Rains Are Here, You deserve a less stressful bus ride to work. Pick up your smartphone and purchase a ticket on GONA, monitor the closest buses to you and hop onto one. Pay for your ride in style, avoid the chaos of “No Change”, Gona tweeted.

The startup recently announced the completion of a multi-million dollar Pre-A round of financing.
Even though GONA is headquartered in China, Lagos remains its primary focus. In Lagos, GONA has fully completed localization, with roll-out in certain routes within Lagos, one of which is Yaba to the University of Lagos (UNILAG) campus.

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.

Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/Afrikanheroes/

Opera Founded Startup OPay Raises $50M For Mobile Finance in Nigeria

July 10, 2019

OPay is just a year old in Nigeria, but the startup is already making waves. Nigerian road users would be familiar with the green livery motorbike hailing startup ORide, which is a part of the OPay business. Founded by Norwegian browser company Opera, OPay, the Africa-focused mobile payments startup has raised $50 million in new funding.

A Look At The Funding

A large chunk of the investment came from investors including Sequoia China, IDG Capital, and Source Code Capital. Opera also joined the round in the payments venture it created.
OPay intends to use the capital (which wasn’t given a stage designation) primarily to grow its digital finance business in Nigeria — Africa’s most populous nation and largest economy.
OPay will also support Opera’s growing commercial network in Nigeria, including its motorcycle ride-hail app ORide and OFood delivery service.
Opera founded Opay in 2018 on the popularity of its internet search engine. Opera’s web-browser has ranked number two in usage in Africa, after Chrome, the last four years.

The Startup’s Statistics

On the payments side, OPay in Nigeria has scaled to 40,000 active agents and $5 million in transaction volume in 10 months.
The $50 million investment in OPay is more than just another big round in Africa. It has significance for the continent’s tech-ecosystem on multiple levels.
To start, OPay’s raise tracks greater influence in African tech from China — whose engagement with African startups has been light compared to China’s deal-making on infrastructure and commodities. OPay founder Opera was acquired in 2016 for $600 million by a consortium of Chinese investors, led by current Opera CEO Yahui Zhou.
The majority of the investment for OPay’s raise comes from Chinese funds and sources, including Source Code Capital, Sequoia China, and GSR Ventures. There’s not a lot of statistical data on the value of Chinese VC investment in Africa, but a large portion of $50 million to a fintech venture stands out.

This New Investment May Mean A Major Shift For Nigerian Digital Payments Startups

OPay’s VC haul also has significance vis-a-vis digital-finance in Nigeria. In tandem with other trends, it could support the shift of Nigeria surpassing Kenya as Africa’s digital payments leader. For years Kenya has outpaced Nigeria in P2P digital payments volumes and digital financial inclusion, largely due to the rapid adoption of mobile-money products, such as Safaricom’s M-Pesa.
Some of this is due in part to Nigeria’s Central Bank limiting the ability of non-banks (including telcos) to offer mobile payment services. The CBN eased many of those restrictions earlier this year. This opens the door for mobile-operators like MTN, with the largest phone network in Nigeria, to offer mobile-money products. In addition to fintech regulatory improvements, there’s been a gradual increase in VC flowing to Nigerian payment ventures.
The country’s leading digital payment company, Paga, raised $10 million in 2018 to further expand its customer base that now tallies 13 million. OPay’s $50 million backed commitment to grow mobile money in Nigeria should provide another big boost to digital-finance adoption across the country’s 190 million people.
And not to be overlooked is how OPay’s capital raise moves Opera toward becoming a multi-service commercial internet platform in Africa. Part of the $50 million investment includes diversifying country and product offerings. “Geographic expansion of OPay and other services is a key part of our plans,” Opera CEO Yahui Zhou told TechCrunch via email.

This could place OPay and its Opera supported the suite of products on a competitive footing with other ride-hail, food-delivery, and payments startups across the continent. It could also mean competition between Opera and Africa’s largest multi-service internet company, e-commerce unicorn Jumia.

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.