Eight years after its Lagos debut, OPay has posted the kind of growth numbers that confirm it is no longer a fintech story; it is a financial infrastructure story.
OPay has crossed 45 million active wallets, with its merchant network expanding to over one million nationwide, cementing its position as Nigeria's most widely used digital payments platform and one of the continent's most consequential fintech operations. The milestone arrives as the company prepares for what may be its most consequential next chapter.
The commercial scale behind those numbers is equally striking. OPay processed approximately $9.2 billion in total payment volume in 2025, with its merchant network recording 48% year-on-year transaction growth. The platform's AI-powered customer service now resolves 78% of user issues instantly, cutting human support tickets by 62% and lowering the cost per user interaction to approximately $0.45, a unit economics improvement that matters greatly at this scale.
OPay now ranks among the top ten fintech apps globally by daily active users, with more than 20 million daily active users and 36 million monthly active users worldwide, a reach that places it in direct comparison with some of the most established digital payments platforms in Asia and Latin America.
The IPO dimension is adding a new layer of strategic scrutiny to each user and merchant milestone. OPay is reportedly working with Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. on a potential US stock market listing, seeking a valuation of approximately $4 billion, a figure that will ultimately be stress-tested against the quality of its user base and the durability of its merchant network.
By cutting bank-style fees, OPay has reduced average remittance costs for low-income Nigerians by approximately 70% compared to traditional banks, a value proposition that has driven mass migration from bank channels into its ecosystem, particularly among students, gig workers, artisans, and small traders who were either underserved or entirely excluded by conventional banking.
The merchant expansion is particularly significant. One million merchants means OPay is no longer competing only for consumer wallets; it is competing for the commercial infrastructure layer of Nigeria's informal economy, the same terrain where Moniepoint has built its dominant position. OPay's long-term ambition is to serve one billion users and ten million merchants globally by 2031, a target that makes the current milestones look less like achievements and more like baseline requirements for the journey ahead.
For Nigerian consumers, the platform's reach has a practical meaning that transcends the metrics: "It's much more convenient to pay with OPay now than with cash, even street vendors are starting to accept OPay payments. It has changed our way of life," a user told local media. In eight years, OPay has gone from a startup experiment to a daily habit for tens of millions of Nigerians. The IPO, when it comes, will put a price on that habit.
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