The Nigerian mobile payment business scene is about to be heated-up once again with a bullish move by OPay to ramp up its customer base.
Owned by Opera Software AS, OperaPay or OPay is part of Opera’s pivoting strategy to enter the mobile payment services’ business in Africa’s largest economy.
To gain access into the mobile money and mobile payment business, people with the knowledge of the matter claimed that Opera acquired Paycom, a Nigerian mobile payment company for a speculated sum of $5 million. The acquisition has is now leverage to gain access to different aspects of payment processing across food, groceries, bills, bike-haling and mobile banking.
People familiar with the company said it processes daily transactions in the excess of over N1 billion daily.
OPay has just launched ORide, its bike-hailing business, that pits the company in direct competition with Gokada, the market’s first startup to offer bike-hailing services. ORide will be one of the services offered within the OPay app. In response to ORide’s entry, Gokada announced last week that it has raised about $5.3 million from new and existing investors.
Currently, Helios Towers’ backed Interswitch leads the market with its Quikteller and Verve card in the retail end of its business. However, Interswitch also provides payment technology and software to the eCommerce and payment industry in general. Interswitch has always been looking at how to get more bite in the payment processing business by investing in other verticals. After it failed in the bid to acquire Konga, the company has since launched its Global Mall, an eCommerce business integrated with its Quickteller platform. Its partnership with Ferratum has also given it access into the micro-lending business.
Recently, the market has witnessed opposition to Interswitch’s dominance in the technology side of things with the entrance of Flutterwave and Paystack. They have both raised new funding to scale their business across various industries they service.
Paga, a mobile payment company has also been a major force in the business and it could join Intersiwtch to take on OPay bullish run on the market. Earlier today, global logistics giant, DHL announced that Paga will be its payment processing partner in Nigeria for its Africa eShop which will now be available across 20 African countries including Ghana and Kenya. In 2018, Paga announced that it raised $10 growth funding from Goodwell (managed by Alitheia Capital), Adlevo Capital, Omidyar Network and Unreasonable Capital making its total raising to hit $35 million.
The bullish move by OPay to use several services to push its mobile payment business will make players like Interswitch look at defending their business units. With the aggression playing out from different corners of the competition, it seems Nigeria’s fintech scene is poised to witness intense competition and funding rounds in the coming months.
Worthy of note is the interest of Nigeria’s major lenders to cut deep into the payment business. GTBank with its 737 mobile payment business has become a success leading the banking category in payment processing. However, the service has only gained traction in sending and receiving money. Other major lenders have in the last four years ramp up their investment on mobile payment.
Last year alone, Nigeria’s fintech companies raised about $20 million (that is N7.2 billion in local currency basis). However, this is a small amount when Opera’s $100 million war chest to scale its business across Africa is considered.
Chinese-owned company Opera Software AS, is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange, with the majority of ownership and control belonging to Chinese businessman Zhou Yahui, founder of Beijing Kunlun Tech.
