In the midst of Nigeria’s digital banking struggles, OPay is rising to the event.

On Friday morning, I took an impromptu journey from Abuja to Kaduna. The Bolt journey from Asokoro to the automobile park in Mabushi value ₦1500 and I paid through switch to the driver’s checking account. It was an OPay account. When I discovered a automobile heading to Kaduna, I  provided to pay through switch once more however this time, the driver was skeptical.  “We don’t take transfers here,” he instructed me in Hausa. “Except you use OPay. Do you have OPay?” 

I don’t have the OPay app, however I take advantage of PocketApp and Carbon, that are additionally nice alternate options. Despite making an attempt to clarify to him that my Carbon app would switch his cash to him very quickly, he didn’t budge. “I only trust OPay. With that one, my money will reach me in no time. All these other ones will hold my money.” I understood the sentiment. Two days earlier than, I went grocery purchasing and made a cost into the retailer’s account. The cost was reversed to my account a lot later in the day.

The digital banking disaster

The naira redesign and subsequent money scarcity have made digital banking more difficult for Nigerians. Increased reliance on banking apps and USSD platforms has negatively impacted financial institution efficiency, placing pressure on the already unsteady infrastructure of digital banking. Bank transfers typically take longer than regular and failed transactions take up to ten days to be resolved. 

An Access Bank supply attributes these failures to a mixture of community failures, increased site visitors, and understaffing in IT departments.“These new banks (fintechs) do not have as many users and so it is easier for them to manage transactions efficiently. They also have stronger IT departments with enough people and resources to immediately tackle any problems their users might have. With us, you have millions of people transacting at the same time, and sometimes the fault even comes from telco networks and not us directly. ” The affiliation of telcos have nevertheless since denied any accountability on this.

How OPay is facilitating clean transactions for customers

While conventional banks have been drowning in unfavorable PR, it has allowed non-traditional banks aka fintechs to show their competence. One such is OPay. The four-year-old platform has gone from being an everyday fintech to changing into one of the most trusted means of transaction obtainable at the moment. According to Femi Hansen, OPay’s PR & Communications supervisor, the firm made a wager on cashless Nigeria and constructed a resilient infrastructure forward of time. “We have significantly invested in our payment infrastructure to ensure our system can withstand a cashless environment. We believe that peer-to-peer payments are the future of payments in Nigeria, so we were not caught unaware, we were prepared for new users and built the technology infrastructure that supports it,” he shared with TechCabal.

The firm has witnessed a pointy rise in the quantity of transactions — particularly OPay to Opay transactions— that are simpler to course of. With their quantity of customers at about 26 million, the firm has additionally skilled an inflow of new customers in the previous two months and believes that the quantity will proceed to develop. Hansen shared that the money redesign has had a optimistic impression on the enterprise. “We have seen the strongest metrics, from transaction volume to DAU & MAUs. We currently have over 26 million app downloads, and in the last few months, we have gained a significant number of first-time users. We will keep growing as more consumers come to trust OPay as a reliable, fast, and safe platform.”

While OPay is not the solely Nigerian cost fintech with quick, environment friendly transactions, they’ve penetrated the coronary heart of the Nigerian market with a brilliant app that gives customers with a single service to handle all their funds in a easy, fast, and safe platform. OPay took offline advertising critically, and that has paid off at an important second. It is at the moment the largest consumer-focused fintech participant in Africa, in accordance to The Payment Infrastructure.

Hansen contains that it’s not all roses at OPay. “We have experienced some challenges in recent times because our infrastructure is resilient and we have been able to adjust quickly to transaction demand. However, most transactions have to go through other players whose infrastructure might not be as resilient as ours. We have seen some of this recently and that’s an ecosystem challenge that we have to address.”