Standard Bank Group will invest as much as US$200-million in OPay, the Nigeria-focused fintech that filed on Friday to list its shares in New York.
Standard Bank said it had signed a subscription agreement but did not disclose the amount. That detail is in the registration statement OPay filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Stanbic Africa Holdings, a Standard Bank Group company, will buy shares in a private placement alongside the initial public offering, subject to the offering going ahead and to regulatory approval.
It will pay the lowest of three amounts: $200-million; 0.98% of Standard Bank Group’s qualifying regulatory capital, excluding unappropriated profit; or the price of a 4.99% stake in OPay after the offering, at the IPO price. With some exceptions, Standard Bank may not sell the shares until 12 months after the date of OPay’s prospectus.
The bank has a second role in the listing. The Standard Bank of South Africa is one of the four representatives of the underwriters, alongside Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and China International Capital Corporation (CICC). B Riley Securities and Needham & Company are co-managers. And Lungisa Fuzile, CEO of Standard Bank’s Africa Regions business and a former director-general of the national treasury, will join OPay’s board as a non-executive director once the placement closes, the filing shows. Fuzile was CEO of Standard Bank South Africa from 2018 to 2024.
Listing plans
OPay has applied to list American depositary shares, US-traded certificates representing its ordinary shares, on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “OPAY”. The filing does not yet give the number of shares on offer or a price range. Bloomberg reported on 18 August that Standard Bank was in talks to buy a stake, and Nigeria’s BusinessDay reported the next day that OPay was targeting a valuation of about $4-billion.
Beyond the shareholding, the two companies plan to look at offering digital banking in African markets and selling selected Standard Bank products through OPay’s app and merchant network. Merchant acquiring, payments, lending, remittances and jointly developed products are also on the list. None of this is binding. The filing says the memorandum of understanding OPay signed with Stanbic Africa Holdings on 14 August “does not obligate either party to implement any particular initiative”, and any project will need definitive agreements and regulatory approval.
“Standard Bank’s banking expertise and African footprint complement OPay’s digital financial services platform and merchant ecosystems,” said Standard Bank Group CEO Sim Tshabalala. “Together we see potential to expand access to financial services, support cross-border commerce and deliver value to clients across Africa.”
OPay was set up in 2017 by Zhou Yahui (also known as James Zhou), in collaboration with Opera, the Oslo-based web browser company listed on Nasdaq that Zhou chairs. Zhou also founded Kunlun Tech, which is listed in Shenzhen.
OPay launched payments in Nigeria in 2018 after buying a local financial services provider, and in 2021 raised $400-million in a round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 that valued it at $2-billion, Reuters reported at the time. Headquartered in Singapore, it now also operates in Indonesia, Egypt and Pakistan, but Nigeria produced 89.5% of its revenue in the first half of 2026.
The prospectus shows how quickly the business has turned. Revenue rose to $536.3-million in 2025 from $205.7-million in 2024, and a net loss of $50.8-million became net income of $72.5-million. In the six months to 30 June 2026, revenue more than doubled to $467.1-million and net income rose to $90.9-million from $21.7-million a year earlier.
OPay had 50.1 million monthly active users at the end of July. Gross transaction value, the total value of payments, transactions and loans processed through its platform, reached $339.1-billion in the first half of 2026. In Nigeria, OPay’s active users were equal to about 66.1% of all active users of the financial apps tracked by DataSparkle, an app-monitoring company, in the first half of 2026, the filing says.
Zhou holds 21.3% of OPay before the offering, Opera 8.6% and SoftBank 6.6%.
Regulatory risk
The OPay filing lists among its risks that regulatory action in its markets could include temporary restrictions or suspensions on signing up new customers.
Standard Bank already operates in Nigeria through Stanbic IBTC Holdings. It said the investment builds on the growth strategy it set out at its recent capital markets day. — © 2026 NewsCentral Media
