20 Things You Didn’t Know About OPay
OPay is an electronic payment startup. The company develops and oversees the operation of a mobile payment application. Users access the app for paying bills, shopping, transferring money, and similar transactions. The company has recently made the news in business circles with a surge of investor interest and venture capital funding that has increased its valuation by an impressive margin. If you’re not yet familiar with this forward-moving fintech company, here are 20 things you probably didn’t know about OPay.
1.Opay is a versatile fintech enterprise
According to Crunchbase, OPay is listed under five different industries on the world wide web. This is because of its versatility and diversity. It falls under the categories of Financial services because it gives users access to payment services. It is a FinTechfwith advanced technology active that also qualifies it under Mobile Apps and Mobile Payments as well as Payments.
2. OPay is an African startup
OPay is an African company. Its headquarters is in Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria. The company was founded on August 1, 2018. The legal name of the business is Olay Co. Inc. It is also known by the name Operapay.
3. OPay provides solutions for everyday life
The OPay app is a mobile service for customers that works on smartphones, tablets, and other devices. It is a versatile app that provides users with solutions for taking care of everyday matters such as ordering food, paying for groceries, paying bills, as well as sending and receiving money.
4. OPay has a 6-member executive leadership team
There are six executives leading the workforce and guiding the direction of OPay. The team includes Allen Qu, the chief operating officer, Osagie Alone, the director of growth for ORide, Ebunoluwa Shipe, the senior operations manager, Awolowo Moses, the director of ORide business, Olalere Ridwan, the senior director of operations for ORide, and Chengyang Wang, the operation director. Although this is a small team they are exceptionally effective. OPay is growing and expanding under their direction and the startup has achieved remarkable progress in a short time, which grants the executive leadership a solid track record of success.
5. OPay uses complex technology products
The OPay website is powered by a complex array of technologies. There are 25 active technologies employed to ensure that users have a smooth experience using the site and the products offered on the website. A few of the technology products used include Font Awesome, Nginx, and Mobile on Scaleable Content. Although the precise annual cost of the tech products has not been disclosed, it likely runs into the tens of thousands as a budget line item.
6. OPay is an early-stage venture-capital-backed startup
OPay has participated in two rounds of venture capital funding. The first round closed on July 9, 2019, as a Series A round, raising $50 million. The second was a Series B round that raised an additional$120 million for a total of $170 million raised in venture capital funding.
7. OPay has attracted the attention of large VC investors
Currently, there are 3 large venture capital firms leading the funding rounds, including IDG Capital, Sequoia Capital China, and Source Code Capital. OPay is supported by a total of 12 investors including Bertelsmann Asia Investments, Redpoint Ventures China, Gaorong Capital, Longzhu Capital, GSR Ventures, Softbank Ventures Asia, Meituan, and one other. Confidence in OPay’s likelihood of continuing to grow and prosper, and to render a strong return on the investments made by the VC supporters is strong. OPay is serving a niche in the financial payments market that has previously been underserved. The startup is using a unique technology that has not been provided by others who are competitors in the industry and these are a few of the reasons why it stands out above the rest.
8. OPay is still a young company
One of the things that impress us the most about OPay is how far it has come in such a short time. The business didn’t start operations until August of 2018, which is the official launch date. In just a few months OPay will celebrate the third anniversary of its founding, and it has already secured a strong base of supporters and financial backers. The software application/platform has been up and running since shortly after the launch and it is already attracting a large community of users. OPay has taken a rapid-fire approach to its launch and its growth. This is not an easy task to accomplish as there are many technicalities to short through, and IT issues to resolve along the way. It’s still a young company, but it does not show evidence of the growing pains experienced by most companies of this age. In a time when 8 out of 10 new startups fail within a year of their founding, OPay is thriving and growing.
9. Opera Limited has a stake in OPay
OPay is a global web company that is headquartered in Oslo, Norway. It is listed as OPRA on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Opera recently made the announcement that it is monetizing 20 percent of its ownership in OPay. It still owns 71 percent of the shares of OPay, but it is offering shareholders the opportunity by putting this percentage up for sale. This action has brought in a gain of $31.1 million versus carrying the number of shares that were sold, according to Global Fintech Series.
10. Opera’s CFO is impressed with OPay
In an interview, the CFO of Pera, Frode Jacobsen shared that Opera is impressed with the rapid growth that they have seen in OPay. They’re also pleased to announce that it has emerged as one of the leading fintech companies in all of Africa. Opera’s concerns are with the market and maintaining a high-quality status and confidence for its shareholders and OPay is helping them to meet this objective. Opera provides news products, browsers, and a variety of fintech solutions that have made them a trusted source for hundreds of millions who use its products throughout the globe.
11. OPay is experiencing growth in its monthly app downloads
There has been an impressive 3.43 percent growth in the number of downloads through the OPay website and through Itunes. The average number of monthly downloads for the app is 1,962. The most popular way that people download is through Itunes connect.
12. Web Traffic is increasing to the OPay website
In addition to an increase in downloads of the OPay payment app, web traffic to the official OPay website has also increased. As of the end of April 2021, the analytics show that the number of monthly visits has grown by 3.31 percent. There are a total of 134,348 visitors to the site monthly, which has resulted in OPay being ranked as number 226,244 out of all of the websites registered on the world wide web. This is an impressive figure considering that there are millions of websites listed.
13. OPay is the most popular in Taiwan
Although OPay is an African company, the majority of the web traffic visits are coming from people who are in the country of Taiwan. Ninety-two percent of the traffic comes from there with a current growth rate of 2.56 percent. It is second most popular with people from the United States, who make up five percent of the web traffic with a monthly average growth rate of 5.97 percent. One percent of the visitors come from Poland, one percent from Malaysia, showing a growth rate of 0.43 percent, and one percent come from Hong Kong, with a growth rate of 11.42 percent. What this tells us is that OPay is gaining in international popularity and people from around the world are becoming more familiar with the app, or at least interested in checking it out.
14. OPay is Chinese-backed and Africa-focused
According to TechCrunch, OPay is a fintech platform that is focused on providing people in the country of Africa with fintech payment solutions. It is, however, backed by the Chinese in terms of venture capital and other funding. Big businesses from all around the world is interested in OPay as an investment option. From Chinese investors to a Norwegian-based owner, it has become a sensation in international business circles.
15. OPay will become a unicorn
The latest news that has come out of OPay is a proposed $400 million fundraising effort that is slated to take the company over the top on its way to becoming a unicorn-status enterprise. Although this is an event that is being talked about at the present, there is strong confidence that the fundraising effort will come through. If they do raise the proposed $400 million, it will push OPay over the top with a valuation of $1.5 billion. It’s well over the required amount of $1 billion to join this elite group of highly valued companies. It’s one of the most successful fintech to come out of the African continent to date.
16. Opera became active in Lagos in 2018
OPay is the reason why Opera expanded its interest in Nigerian business. Opera launched the OPay mobile money platform in the country because it saw the opportunity for tremendous growth in the region. Soon after the operation was established, aggressive expansion within the city commenced with a ride-hailing service also under its umbrella called ORide. Although the transportation service is no longer in operation, it established a foothold for Opera to get OPay up and running.
17. OPay is testing verticals
One of the best ways to expand the operations of a business is to add verticals that bring in more streams of income and reach a larger segment of the population. OPay has already tested multiple verticals, such as ORide, which has gone the way of the dodo. OBus is another vertical that involved the launch of a bus booking platform, but that venture didn’t pan out any better than ORide. OExpress is a logistics delivery service that it launched as yet another vertical business. Others included a B2B e-commerce platform called OTrade, and a food delivery service called OFood.
18. OPay continues to add to its diverse line of services
Opera is moving OPay in different directions these days to bring in more users for the company. The OPay app has been the most successful venture so far, as Nigeria and other African countries were in need of a better way to use technology for moving money around and making payments. It has since become a staple for users who enjoy the convenience of sending and receiving funds, making payments, buying groceries, and performing various other day-to-day tasks.
19. OPay is capturing the lion’s share of the market in Africa
With all the different verticals that Opera has attempted, OPay has by far been the most lucrative. Really, none of the other services that it has tried to establish have caught on, with the exception of OPay. Analytics show that there was a 4.5 growth in the monthly transactions conducted through OPay last year with more than $2 billion in money transactions in the month of December 2020 alone. So far, OPay claims to process roughly eighty percent of all bank transfers conducted through mobile money operators in the country of Nigeria. Twenty percent of the non-merchant POS transactions are also through OPay’s mobile app. OPay is a competitive force to be reckoned with in Nigeria’s fintech market, which is the most densely populated nation in Africa. A large percentage of the population in the country are underbanked or unbanked.
20. OPay is a business to keep your eye on
OPay is providing services for an underserved population that has been hungry for change. Mobile technology has given them the needed resources to move into the modern age with their finances. Over 160 million active mobile money clients were responsible for generating more than $495 billion in transaction values, and OPay is there to take their cut of the market share. OPay is a company to keep your eye on.
