Opay

The business was founded in Nigeria in 2018 by the Chinese entrepreneur Zhou Yahui through Opera Limited, the Norway-registered browser company he also controls. Opera has kept a minority shareholding in OPay ever since, and its regulatory filings have become one of the few public windows into the fintech's value. A filing covering the period to December 2024 put Opera's 9.4 percent stake at roughly $258 million, which implied an overall valuation for OPay of about $2.75 billion.

Growth in Nigeria has been steady rather than sudden in recent years. Company figures put monthly active transacting users at 25.13 million in 2024, rising to 39.32 million by the end of 2025. By mid-2026 OPay said it had surpassed 45 million registered users and more than one million active merchants, a base built largely on its network of green point-of-sale agents in markets, motor parks and neighbourhood shops across the country.

Regulation has shaped much of OPay's recent history in Nigeria. Along with several other fintechs, it operated for years under a microfinance bank licence that limited it to regional operations, even as its user base spread nationwide. In January 2026, the Central Bank of Nigeria upgraded OPay's licence, together with those of Moniepoint, Kuda Bank, PalmPay and Paga, to national status, formally recognising the scale the company had already reached.

On recognition, OPay was named Fintech Company of the Year at the Leadership Conference and Awards in both 2024 and 2025, making it the only fintech to have won the award twice in a row as of the most recent edition held in Abuja in February 2026. For a brand whose growth has been driven almost entirely by cash-based, underbanked users rather than a venture-funded, app-first customer base, that combination of scale, regulatory formalisation and repeat industry recognition is a fair summary of why it leads this year's FBSI table.