Standard Bank Eyes 4.99% OPay Stake Before NYSE Listing

Stanbic Africa Holdings, a Standard Bank subsidiary, has signed a subscription agreement for the shares through a private placement. The agreement is tied to OPay’s initial public offering (IPO) and still awaits regulatory approvals.

OPay has applied to list American depositary shares on the NYSE under the proposed ticker OPAY. The registration statement does not disclose the offering’s valuation or final size, though earlier reports pointed to a potential valuation of $4 billion.

From a $50.8 Million Loss to a $72.5 Million Profit

The investment follows a sharp financial turnaround at OPay, with revenue climbing quickly across each reporting period:

• 2024: $205.7 million in revenue and a net loss of $50.8 million
• 2025: $536.3 million in revenue and a net profit of $72.5 million
• First half of 2026: $467.1 million in revenue and $90.9 million in net income

Revenue in the first half of 2026 more than doubled, and net income rose sharply alongside it.

Nigeria Carries the Business

OPay’s operations are heavily concentrated in Nigeria, which accounted for 89.5% of its revenue in the first half of 2026. The fintech reported 50.1 million monthly active users by July and a gross transaction value of $339.1 billion for the half-year. Active Nigerian users made up 66.1% of all financial application users tracked by DataSparkle.

Zhou Yahui founded OPay in 2017 in collaboration with Opera, and the company launched Nigerian operations in 2018. It later expanded to Indonesia, Egypt, and Pakistan, and raised $400 million in 2021 in a round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.

That concentration is also where the main risk sits. OPay itself flags regulatory intervention as a material risk, noting that authorities could impose restrictions or suspend new customer onboarding, which would hit user acquisition and earnings. Standard Bank’s investment ties its fortunes to Nigeria’s financial services market and its regulatory environment.

What Standard Bank Gets Beyond the Shares

Lungisa Fuzile, Chief Executive of Standard Bank’s Africa Regions, will join OPay’s board as a non-executive director once the private placement closes. The two companies have also identified opportunities in digital banking services across African markets, and they plan to distribute Standard Bank products through OPay’s network. Collaboration on merchant acquiring, payments, and lending is also on the table.

The memorandum of understanding behind these plans is non-binding, so specific projects will need definitive agreements before they move forward.

Hashlytics Take

A 4.99% stake capped at $200 million implies a valuation of roughly $4 billion, which matches the earlier reports and suggests the price is already set. At that size this reads less like a financial bet and more like a positioning move, with the board seat and the distribution plans doing most of the work.

The catch is that the commercial upside is still a non-binding promise, while the Nigerian exposure is already real. With nearly nine of every ten revenue dollars coming from one market, a single regulatory decision on onboarding could matter more to OPay’s numbers than any partnership Standard Bank brings.