OPay, the Nigerian mobile-payments company backed by SoftBank, has closed a $185 million funding round as it works toward an initial public offering in the United States, a step that would place one of Africa’s largest financial-technology firms on an American exchange.
The deal was reported on October 11 by Tech in Asia. The company said the new capital will go toward strengthening its licensing and risk-control systems and toward the preparation work for a U.S. listing. OPay did not disclose the terms of the round, the names of the investors, or its valuation after the deal closed.
The company sits at the center of Nigeria’s payments economy. Founded in 2018 and incubated by Opera, the Norwegian browser maker, OPay runs a mobile-money service built around a network of agents who let customers open accounts, deposit cash, send money, and pay bills without entering a bank branch. The model is aimed at a country where a large share of adults still operate outside the formal banking system and where cash remains the default for everyday commerce.
SoftBank has been OPay’s most prominent backer. In August 2021, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led a $400 million round that valued the company at $2 billion, making it Africa’s first startup to reach that mark. The investment was SoftBank’s first in an Africa-focused company, and it was read at the time as a signal that the Japanese group believed a payments model built for low-income, cash-heavy markets could travel.
That 2021 round took OPay’s total funding to roughly $570 million and drew a mostly Asian group of investors, including Sequoia Capital China, Source Code Capital, and funds affiliated with the Chinese delivery giant Meituan. In the years since, OPay has kept a low profile on fundraising, and the new round is the first of its size to be reported in several years.
OPay does not have the field to itself. Flutterwave, which processes payments for businesses, and Moniepoint, another agent-led bank, are among its main rivals, and Flutterwave has for years been reported to be pursuing a U.S. listing of its own. A successful debut by any of them would set a reference point for how public investors value the sector, and the first to reach the market would shape the terms for the rest.
A U.S. listing would carry weight beyond the company itself. African fintech firms have absorbed large amounts of venture capital over the past decade, but they have generally returned money to investors through mergers, secondary share sales, or listings on exchanges closer to home. A debut on an American exchange would test whether U.S. public markets are willing to price a business built on low-margin, high-volume payments in an emerging economy.
That test will come down to the numbers. Payments companies are judged on how much money flows through their systems, on the share of each transaction they keep, and on the cost of acquiring and serving customers who often still transact in cash. OPay has not published recent financial results, so investors have little to work with ahead of any regulatory filing.
The company’s decision to point the new capital at licenses and risk controls is instructive. A public listing forces a payments firm to show that it can satisfy regulators in every market where it operates and that its systems can withstand the scrutiny of auditors, underwriters, and exchanges. Money flowing to those functions suggests the listing is the purpose of the round, with expansion a secondary use.
Nigeria’s own regulators have pushed the shift toward digital payments in recent years, a policy that has enlarged the market OPay serves and raised the bar for the compliance work a listed company must show. The Central Bank of Nigeria’s drive to reduce the role of cash has drawn millions of new users onto digital rails, and with them a thicker set of rules on licensing and controls.
What remains unclear is the shape of the deal. OPay has not said how much it hopes to raise, which banks it has hired, or when it expects to file. A U.S. listing would also follow a quiet stretch for African technology companies on American exchanges, and the reception would depend as much on the mood of the public markets as on the company’s own books.
For SoftBank, the position is a test of a thesis it has held for years: that the mobile-payments playbook that succeeded elsewhere could take root in Africa. A completed listing would vindicate that bet. A postponed one would leave a company last valued at $2 billion searching for a different route to liquidity for its investors.
OPay has not commented beyond what Tech in Asia reported, and it has offered no timetable for a public debut. The round settles one question — that the company can still raise money at scale — while leaving the harder one, whether it can complete a U.S. listing, for a later date.
