OPay Raises $120m in Series B Round

OPay, Opera owned leading fintech startup, raised $120 million in a Series B round backed mainly by Chinese investors.

In July, the fintech company raised $50 million in a Series A to further operations in Africa and deepen growth across key markets.

The company has now raised another $120 million from Meituan-Dianping, GaoRong, Source Code Capital, Softbank Asia, BAI, Redpoint, IDG Capital, Sequoia China and GSR Ventures to scale operations in Nigeria and expand payments product to Kenya, Ghana and South 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, stated in a statement.

OPay, in its unusual strategy, built services like motorcycle ride-hailing app, ORide; delivery service, OFood; wealth management service, Owealth; Okash and SME marketing and advertising, Oleads, around its financial payments service to create a one-stop internet-based commercial product.

The company’s CFO Frode Jacobsen, who spoke on the new fundraising, said while OPay plans to capture substantial market share around bill payments and airtime purchases, the company will prioritise services with high-frequency usage.

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

He listed Food Services, Transportation Services and other daily activities as the company’s focus.

He added that OPay will enter new markets with the $120 million to further its reach ahead of the AfCFT agreement.

Since the OPay raised $50 million in July, it has increased active agents to 140,000 and currently handles daily transaction volume of $10 million, the company stated on its website.

Nigeria remained attractive to global tech investors following Visa inc $200 million investment in Interswitch last week and another $40 million invested in Lagos based payments startup PalmPay earlier this month.