OPay

OPay posted the single largest year-on-year gain in Nigeria's 2026 brand rankings, and it's the second consecutive year the company has been named the ranking's Highest Gainer. The company's scale explains much of the story: its monthly active transacting user base now exceeds 45 million, its agent network has passed 500,000, the largest such network in the country, and its merchant base has crossed 1 million, putting its green point-of-sale terminals among the most familiar sights from Lagos motor parks to roadside kiosks nationwide.

Adoption has concentrated among traders, artisans, transport workers, and small business operators for whom an OPay agent's storefront has functioned as their first meaningful point of contact with the formal financial system, a role recognised by the Central Bank of Nigeria's 2024 Financial Inclusion Innovation Award. The CBN upgraded OPay's operating licence to national status in January 2026, formalising its nationwide footprint with materially higher compliance obligations, including a mandate to maintain physical dispute-resolution offices; the upgrade followed an earlier 2024 CBN penalty of ₦1 billion for KYC non-compliance. Governance also changed during the period, with a new global core management team including Lars Boilesen as Co-CEO announced in January 2026.

OPay's origins are distinct from most of Nigeria's homegrown fintech stories: it began as Paycom before being acquired and rebranded by Opera, the Norwegian company behind the Opera Mini browser. That capital investment and rapid agent recruitment strategy have turned OPay into one of the continent's most significant fintech growth stories, now valued above $3 billion with reports pointing toward preparation for a US listing.