OPay, the African fintech startup has announced that it has raised a $120 million Series B from Chinese investors include 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 according to Opera’s CFO Frode Jacobsen.
This Series B raised by OPay comes five months after it raised $50 million investment led by Sequoia China, IDG Capital, and Source Code Capital. Opera also contributed to the funding round in the payments venture it established in 2018.
These are interesting times for the Nigerian fintech space as it appears foreign investors are racing to play a key role in promoting financial inclusion and reaching the country’s unbanked population for a profit.
Recently, Visa reportedly invested $200 million in Insterswitch, a leading technology-driven company focused on the digitisation of payments in Nigeria and other countries in Africa, and China’s mobile phone maker Transsion led a $40 million investment in the UK headquartered PalmPay.
“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.
On how Opay will ration the $120 million across its new markets, Opera CFO Frode Jacobsen said OPay looks to capture volume around bill payments and airtime purchases, but not necessarily a priority. “That’s not something you do every 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. Since its Series A raise, OPay in Nigeria has scaled to 140,000 active agents and $10 million in daily transaction volume, according to company stats.
OPay prides itself as a super app that offers almost every day services that the average Nigerian needs and these includes ORide, ride-hailing, OFood, it’s food services, Olist, its classified platform, loans and subscription services, airtime purchase among others.
1 Comment