Opay aims for $2 billion transaction value by end of 2020, Plans to Extend Footprint to North Africa

Nigerian fintech startup founded by Opera, OPay, has confirmed plans to expand its payments service operations to North Africa next year as it aims for a $2 billion transaction value by end of 2020. The company started with $363 million in January and grew to a whopping $1.4 billion in November. 

According to a Bloomberg report, the Managing Director, Iniabasi Akpan, stated that company's performance was due to spike in transactions emanating from the COVID-19 restriction of movement and forced people to seek for alternative payments services

“We plan to reach transactions value of about $2 billion by the end of this year. He also said that the company will leverage its network of 300,000 offline agents to deepen the adoption of its payments service. The process has begun and we will see how the first quarter turns out”, Akpan said.

Mr Akpan also indicated that the company is now planning an entry into the north African market after its success in Africa’s most populous country.

Last year, OPay raised $190 million and announced its intention to expand into South Africa and Kenya this year. This did not go as planned as the expansion was severely affected by the Coronavirus. In July 2020, the company suspended part of its operations including the ride-hailing and the logistics businesses to focus on the payments business

Mr Akpan also talked about a new digital overdraft product for customers who have short-term funding. Customers can 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.

“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.”

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,” Akpan said. He expects to launch the credit platform in the first quarter subject to approval from the central bank.

With a large customer base of about 7 million users, Akpan says OPay currently processes about 80% of bank transfers among mobile money operators in Nigeria and 20% of the non-merchant point of sales transactions.