Opera-backed Opay raises $120m in series B funding

Olufikayo Owoeye

Still basking in the euphoria of Visa’s $200million investment in Nigeria’s fintech company, Interswitch and a $40million raise by Lagos based payment startup, PalmPay by China’s Transsion, Africa focused fintech startup OPay has raised a $120 million Series B round backed by Chinese investors, less than 6 months after it announced its last funding round of $50 million in June.

Opay, incubated by Norwegian based, global consumer Internet company Opera, is already Nigeria’s leading mobile wallet and motorbike ridesharing provider, and is rapidly expanding.

Series B investors included Meituan-Dianping, DragonBall Capital (The Investment fund backed by Meituan-Dianping), GaoRong Capital, Source Code Capital, SoftBank Ventures Asia, Bertelsmann Asia Investments (BAI), Redpoint China, IDG Capital, Sequoia Capital China and GSR Ventures.

OPay launched its mobile payment service in August 2018, creating an infrastructure on which the company is now adding new services. The agent-centric mobile payment operation focused on reaching the massive unbanked population of Nigeria.

Since its Series A funding, OPay tripled its active agents to over 140,000 and saw daily transaction volumes doubling to exceed $10 million per day, furthering the company’s position as the largest mobile transaction provider in the country.

Additionally, OPay’s motorbike ridesharing service has become the largest of its kind in Nigeria, more than tripling daily rides over the past three months, and the company recently launched additional services around food delivery and cashless payments for offline businesses. While still focusing on Nigeria, OPay has the ambition to expand across the African continent.

According to the company, it would deploy the $120 million across Opera’s Africa network as it looks to capture volume around bill payments and airtime purchase.

SOURCE: BUSINESSDAY