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A few months after raising $50m in Series A funding, Opera’s Nigerian payments platform OPay has raised a further $120m.
Nigerian fintech start-up OPay announced that it has raised $120m in Series B funding. The company plans to use the funding to expand its payments platform to other African nations, including Kenya, Ghana and South Africa, according to TechCrunch.
OPay’s latest funding round saw investment from Meituan-Dianping, Gaorong, Source Code Capital, Softbank Asia, BAI, Redpoint, IDG Capital, Sequoia China and GSR Ventures.
In July, the company announced that it had raised $50m in a Series A investment round led by IDG Capital, Sequoia China, Source Code Capital, Meituan-Dianping, GSR Ventures and Opera Limited. Since then, OPay has increased its daily transaction volume from $5m to $10m.
OPay, which is short for Opera Pay, was launched by Opera in 2018. Opera’s web browser has been the second most used web browser in Africa for the last four years.
Opera’s business in Africa
When the Series A round was announced, Opera CEO Yahui Zhou commented: “By incubating OPay and supporting the company through its rapid acceleration, Opera has also demonstrated its ability to leverage its brand and consumer reach to create attractive, fast-growing businesses on the African continent.”
As noted by TechCrunch, Africa’s population of 1.2bn represents the largest share of the world’s unbanked and underbanked population, making fintech a highly promising sector on the continent.
As a result, there are many competitors to OPay, including Interswitch, which recently received a $200m investment from Visa, and Lagos-based PalmPay, which recently raised $40m.
As well as operating OPay, Opera also runs the ORide and OBus services in Nigeria. Oride is a ride-hailing platform primarily focused on motorcycles as a means of transport, while OBus offers a similar platform focused on ride-sharing on buses.
As the branding indicates, these platforms are all linked to OPay. The company also runs a lending service called OKash and a food delivery service called OFood.
