Optasia wants to do for banks what it did for telcos

Optasia CEO Salvador Anglada says the very same algorithms that made credit-vetting decisions via mobile wallets can be used in formal banking.

Newly listed, technology-driven fintech Optasia sees the formal banking sector as a “massive opportunity” for growth as the company’s microfinancing business continues to overtake its traditional airtime advance offering.

Speaking to TechCentral at the opening of Optasia’s new Johannesburg offices on Tuesday, CEO Salvador Anglada said the AI-powered credit vetting algorithms the company has developed can help the banking sector increase total loans and lower default rates in specific customer segments.

“You will see in future that the partners that we have will not just be the telcos, but you will see banks partnering with us so they can provide [more efficient credit vetting] because they are not able to do so [themselves],” Anglada said.

“They don’t know how to manage the default rate the way we do. Also, we are quite efficient, being a digital platform, so our cost to serve is really low.”

Optasia’s blended default rate for the year-ended 31 December 2025 was 1.2%, up 0.3 percentage points from 0.9% the previous year. Anglada said the rise is an expected consequence of Optasia’s microfinancing business overtaking its airtime advance business as the company’s largest revenue generator. Microfinancing accounts for 63% of Optasia’s revenue, up from 44.5% in 2024.

First foray

Optasia partners with telecommunications operators to access customers. For its financing business, mobile wallets are a critical access point for customer engagement and the data Optasia’s proprietary algorithms ingest. According to Anglada, mobile wallets will also drive customer engagement as Optasia expands into the banking sector, but this is not necessarily the only channel banks might choose.

Optasia’s first foray into banking will be with one of its main investors, FirstRand Group. FirstRand made a R4.7-billion investment into Optasia for 20.1% share ownership in October 2025, ahead of the latter’s JSE listing last November.

Read: Optasia beats IPO guidance in maiden results as lending scales

FirstRand subsidiary First National Bank relaunched its eWallet service in March, adding more functionality to give the platform features typically associated with traditional bank accounts. One of these is a credit-advance facility of between R50 and R500 – something Optasia’s algorithms are designed for.

“We have had conversations with FirstRand to create a strategic partnership to find opportunities to create value. They believe they are not so successful in the lower end of the customer pyramid, and they are looking at how they can improve their value proposition for these customers,” said Anglada.

He acknowledged that banks could opt to provide such services using their own infrastructure, but with margins typically being thinner in lower customer segments, Optasia’s lower operational expenditure to revenue ratio of between 10% and 13% gives it a strong competitive advantage. For banks, the same ratio is typically higher than 30%.

“Our ability to serve those customers in an effective way and handle defaults [well] allows us to do business in a segment of the population that traditionally the banks are not able to. [Where they do], they may to too expensive,” he said.

Being a platform business, Anglada expects Optasia’s costs to decline as the company scales upwards and revenue increases. At its listing in November, Optasia gave a revenue guidance growth of 25%-plus for 2026. Anglada said changes to the global macroeconomic environment, including the four-week-old war in the Middle East, have not changed the outlook. In fact, Optasia has upped its revenue guidance to 30% plus for 2026.

Read: FirstRand ploughs R4.7-billion into Optasia ahead of JSE listing

“I think the beauty of our algorithms, the data and the short term of our loans have allowed us to react very quickly and adapt ourselves to any situation while keeping up our activity in the market… It depends on how long the conflict lasts, but we do not expect our activity in the market to decrease,” said Anglada.  – © 2026 NewsCentral Media