The "King of African Online Lending" Launches Its IPO: Annual Revenue Hits 3.6 Billion, Valuation Reaches 28.5 Billion

Issuing online loans to African communities has nurtured a new IPO.

On October 9, OPay, a leading African fintech giant, officially submitted its listing application to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), planning to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "OPAY". Market sources indicate its target valuation is approximately USD 4 billion (equivalent to around RMB 28.5 billion), with fundraising expected to reach up to USD 500 million.

This company, which originated in Nigeria, is backed by a group of Chinese investors: IDG Capital, HSG, Source Code Capital, Meituan, Gaorong Capital, and others. In 2021, SoftBank Vision Fund II led a USD 400 million financing round for OPay, pushing the company into the ranks of African unicorns.

Today, OPay is already a fintech firm with annual revenue exceeding USD 500 million and 50 million monthly active users. This IPO will also become a landmark event for Chinese internet capital investing in Africa.

- 01 - Zhou Yahui, welcoming another IPO

Looking through OPay's shareholder list, veteran Chinese internet entrepreneur Zhou Yahui stands out as the biggest highlight.

The prospectus shows that before the IPO, Zhou Yahui beneficially holds approximately 21.3% of OPay's shares through his affiliated entities; Nasdaq-listed company Opera, where he serves as chairman, holds 8.6%, SoftBank's affiliated entities hold 6.6%, and IDG Capital's related entities hold 6.0%.

A simple calculation shows that if OPay is eventually listed at a USD 4 billion valuation, the shares directly and beneficially held by Zhou Yahui will be worth approximately USD 852 million, equivalent to over RMB 6 billion. The corresponding value of shares held by Opera and SoftBank will be around USD 344 million and USD 264 million respectively.

For Zhou Yahui, this will be another journey in the capital market.

Public information shows that Zhou Yahui was born in 1977, graduated from Tsinghua University, and founded Kunlun Wanwei in 2008, making his fortune through web games, mobile games and other businesses. In 2015, Kunlun Wanwei was listed on the ChiNext board.

A year later, he turned his sights to Europe.

In 2016, a consortium led by Zhou Yahui acquired the Norwegian Opera browser business for approximately USD 575 million. In July 2018, Opera was listed on Nasdaq, becoming another listed company that Zhou Yahui participated in building.

Opera also became an important springboard for him to enter the African market.

At that time, the Opera browser had a huge user base in Africa. In the first quarter of 2019, Opera's products already had nearly 120 million users in Africa. Zhou Yahui saw another opportunity: since traffic was already available, why not extend from browsers to payment, consumption and even financial services, just like Chinese internet companies.

Thus, OPay was born.

In 2019, OPay completed two consecutive rounds of financing. In July of that year, OPay announced the completion of a USD 50 million financing round, with investors including HSG, IDG Capital, Source Code Capital, Meituan-Dianping, Junsheng Capital and Opera.

Only four months later, OPay completed a USD 120 million Series B financing. In addition to the continued investment from existing investors, it also welcomed new investors such as Gaorong Capital, SoftBank Asia, Bertelsmann Asia Investments (BAI), Redwood Capital, and Meituan Longzhu Capital.

In just half a year, OPay raised a total of USD 170 million. At that time, a number of top-tier institutions in China's internet venture capital circle almost simultaneously invested in Africa.

In August 2021, SoftBank Vision Fund II led a USD 400 million financing round for OPay, valuing the company at USD 2 billion. This was also SoftBank Vision Fund II's first investment in an African startup.

Five years later, OPay is targeting a USD 4 billion valuation. Compared with the last publicly disclosed large financing round, its target valuation has doubled.

- 02 - Rebuilding Alipay in Africa

OPay initially wanted to replicate the payment platform model of Chinese internet companies in Africa, enabling local consumers to transfer money, shop and pay bills via mobile phones, so that merchants no longer had to rely on cash transactions.

But the reality in Africa is very different from that in China.

Take Nigeria as an example. It has a population of over 200 million, with limited coverage of traditional bank branches, and many residents do not have bank accounts. Even if they have accounts, daily cash withdrawal and remittance can be very troublesome.

OPay seized this opportunity.

The prospectus discloses that in November 2017, OPay cooperated with Opera to launch its first payment platform. In 2018, OPay launched its digital payment business in Nigeria by acquiring a local financial service provider.

It did not require everyone to download the app at the very beginning, but first established an agent network.

These agents can be street-side small shops, grocery stores, or ordinary merchants in the community. Consumers give cash to agents, who help them transfer money, top up or pay bills through terminals. Conversely, users can also withdraw money from their e-accounts through agents.

This is equivalent to moving bank counters into street shops.

By June 2019, OPay already had more than 40,000 active agents in Nigeria, with a daily transaction volume of over USD 5 million.

With the payment network in place, Zhou Yahui began to try larger businesses.

At that time, OPay not only did payment, but also launched the motorcycle ride-hailing platform ORide and the food delivery business OFood, trying to acquire users through high-frequency scenarios such as travel and catering, and then keep them in its own payment system.

This model is very reminiscent of the expansion path of Chinese internet companies.

But OPay soon encountered setbacks. In 2020, restrictions on motorcycle operations in some parts of Nigeria, coupled with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, made its travel and delivery businesses unsustainable. The company eventually scaled back these businesses and refocused on financial services.

Facts have proved that payment is an even bigger business.

In 2023, Nigeria implemented a currency redesign, and the arrangement to withdraw old banknotes from circulation caused a serious cash shortage. A large number of consumers and merchants were forced to look for alternative e-payment solutions, and fintech enterprises such as OPay and Moniepoint ushered in a growth window.

By the end of July 2026, its monthly active users reached 50.1 million, and daily active users reached 26.8 million. According to data from Frost & Sullivan, measured by monthly active users, OPay has become the top-ranked financial app in Africa and the Middle East in the first half of 2026.

In the 12 months ending in June 2026, the OPay platform processed approximately 901 billion transactions, with a total transaction value of USD 5.58 trillion. In the first half of 2026, total transaction value increased by 143% year-on-year.

By the end of June this year, the company had deployed a total of about 1.3 million POS terminals, of which about 800,000 were in active use.

This company, which started with payment, has become an important local digital financial infrastructure.

What is even more noteworthy is that OPay has started to make profits.

In 2024, OPay recorded revenue of USD 206 million and a net loss of USD 50.83 million; in 2025, revenue reached USD 536 million (equivalent to about RMB 3.6 billion), up 161% year-on-year, and net profit reached USD 72.47 million, successfully turning losses into profits.

In the first half of 2026, revenue further reached USD 467 million, up 136.5% year-on-year; net profit was USD 90.87 million, more than 4 times that of the same period last year.

Behind the financial figures lies an important change: loans have replaced payment as OPay's largest source of revenue.

In the first half of 2026, OPay's payment-related service revenue was about USD 131 million, accounting for 27.9% of total revenue; self-operated loan financing service revenue reached USD 236 million, accounting for 50.6%. If loan matching revenue is added, credit-related businesses contribute nearly 60% of total revenue.

OPay's profit logic is thus clear: first accumulate a huge amount of users and transaction data through payment, and then provide financial services such as savings and loans to consumers and small merchants.

In the first half of 2026, the volume of new loans issued by OPay in Nigeria reached USD 928 million, more than tripled compared with the same period last year. In the second quarter of this year, the number of quarterly independent borrowing users in Nigeria reached 6.7 million.

However, credit is a double-edged sword.

As the scale of loans grows, OPay's expected credit loss provision rose from USD 38.1 million in the first half of 2025 to USD 118 million in the same period of 2026. Whether the company can maintain high growth in the future largely depends on its ability to control bad loan ratios.

Another hidden concern is market concentration. In the first half of 2026, about 89.5% of OPay's revenue came from Nigeria. Exchange rate fluctuations of the local currency Naira and changes in financial regulations may affect the company's performance.

- 03 - African fintech enters the IPO harvest period

It's not just OPay.

On the very same day that OPay submitted its prospectus, October 9, another African fintech giant Airtel Money officially listed on the London Stock Exchange.

This IPO brought Airtel Money a valuation of about USD 7 billion, with fundraising of about USD 700 million, making it one of the high-profile large listing transactions in London in recent years.

Behind Airtel Money is Airtel Africa, supported by Indian telecom giant Bharti. Relying on its communication network, it has brought mobile wallet, money transfer and savings services to 13 African countries, with about 53 million active users.

Another African fintech unicorn Flutterwave announced a new round of financing in June this year, with a valuation of USD 3.2 billion, and investors including blockchain payment company Ripple.

Different from consumer-oriented OPay, Flutterwave mainly serves merchants, providing cross-border collection, payment interfaces and other infrastructure, with its business covering 35 African countries.

There is also Nigerian local fintech enterprise Moniepoint. In October 2025, this company, which provides payment, account and credit services for small and medium-sized enterprises, announced the completion of a Series C financing of over USD 200 million, led by Development Partners International.

Africa's digital finance business is becoming an area of global capital attention.

The reasons behind this are not difficult to understand.

According to Frost & Sullivan data cited in OPay's prospectus, 44% of adults in Africa still do not have bank accounts, which is higher than the global average of 21%. There are only about 5 bank branches per 100,000 local residents on average, while the global average is about 12.

The insufficient coverage of traditional financial services has left room for fintech enterprises instead.

The popularization of mobile payment in China is largely built on mature internet, e-commerce and banking infrastructure. In markets like Nigeria, fintech companies need to solve a series of problems such as network, equipment, cash deposit and withdrawal, merchant payment and credit records at the same time.

Whoever lays these networks first is likely to gain a large number of long-term users.

This is also why Chinese capital appeared early in the investor lists of African fintech companies.

Around 2019, institutions including IDG Capital, HSG, Source Code Capital, Meituan and Gaorong Capital successively bet on OPay. At that time, China's mobile internet market had gradually matured, while Africa had a large number of payment and consumption scenarios that had not yet been digitalized.

What these investors brought was not only capital, but also the product design, user growth, channel expansion and commercialization experience accumulated by Chinese internet companies.

Now that OPay is about to go public, early investors finally have the opportunity to realize investment exit through the public market.

Changes are also taking place.

In August this year, OPay signed a memorandum of cooperation with Stanbic Africa Holdings, an affiliate of South African banking giant Standard Bank Group, to explore business cooperation in digital banking, merchant acquiring, loans, remittances and other fields. Now, this African banking giant also plans to become a new shareholder of OPay with up to USD 200 million.

OPay has also obtained approval from the board of directors and shareholders, and plans to seek a secondary listing on the Nigerian Stock Exchange after the completion of its New York listing.

OPay was initially promoted by Chinese internet entrepreneurs, financed by Chinese capital in the early stage, later introduced SoftBank, and now attracts investment from local African financial giants, hoping to allow local investors to participate in and share the company's growth.

The capital structure is becoming more and more international, while the business is becoming more and more localized.

But the listing path of African fintech is not without challenges. Airtel Money's share price closed slightly below its issue price on the first day of listing. Facing high interest rates, exchange rate fluctuations and financial regulations, public market investors are not necessarily willing to pay high premiums for the user scale of fintech companies.

OPay also needs to prove that its 50 million monthly active users can continuously generate profits, instead of relying only on the continuously expanding loan business to maintain growth.

If OPay successfully lands on the New York Stock Exchange, Zhou Yahui will welcome another listed company closely related to him, following Kunlun Wanwei and Opera.

The greater significance is that eight years ago, a group of Chinese investors put their money into mobile payment companies far away in Africa. Today, these companies are beginning to make profits, go public, and attract investment from local banking giants.

The place where Chinese internet capital once looked for new users is now becoming a new birthplace of IPOs.

This article does not constitute any investment advice.

This article is from WeChat Official Account "Pencil News" (ID: pencilnews), author: Pencil News, published with authorization from 36Kr.