OPay shelved its $304 million NYSE IPO after a Chinese regulatory inquiry

OPay pulled its $304 million New York Stock Exchange listing on October 30, hours after setting the price, after a regulatory inquiry from China — the home country of founder Zhou Yahui.

The suspension came just as executives were set to ring the opening bell, capping a journey from a small Nigerian mobile money operator to a fintech with 50 million users. Since Opera, the browser company owned by a consortium led by Zhou, acquired a controlling stake in mobile-money operator Paycom in 2018, a mix of luck, near-endless capital and a willingness to start afresh built the business. How OPay handled earlier regulatory hurdles best signals what it does next.

How did OPay get here?

In 2018, a Central Bank of Nigeria capital rule set a ₦2 billion ($1.4 million) minimum for mobile money operators, making undercapitalized institutions cheap to buy. Paycom was one. By July 2018, OPay launched mobile payments in Nigeria on an agent banking model that reached unbanked people — a network that remains part of its moat.

It sold its lending product, OKash, to Opera for $9.5 million in December 2018. That mattered later, when lending became OPay's largest revenue driver.

By May 2019, OPay launched ORide, a motorcycle-hailing business in Lagos. Verticals like OFood, a delivery service, and OBus, a bus-sharing service, deepened ties to Nigeria's informal sector. By July 2019, OPay had raised $50 million from Sequoia China, Source Code Capital and Meituan-Dianping — the largest Nigerian startup round of that year — then a $120 million Series B in November. Most investors were Chinese platform builders pushing the super-app playbook that had worked in Asia.

By end-2019, OPay claimed over 140,000 agents and over $10 million in daily transaction volume. Revenue hit $16.7 million for the 2019 financial year — almost 20x growth. It lost $71.5 million that year, with $36 million going to scaling ORide.

Super-app blitzscaling burned cash for stickiness. It didn't last.

Why did the super app fall apart?

In January 2020, Hindenburg Research published a report alleging Opera targeted Nigeria's poor with predatory loans as browser margins disappeared. The report said Opera's short-term lending businesses — OKash, OPesa, OPay and CashBean in Kenya, Nigeria and India — violated Google Play Store lending policies by misdescribing the loan products. OPay denied the allegations and removed the lending product from its app.

Then a February 2020 Lagos ban on commercial motorcycles and tricycles effectively killed ORide, its most visible product. OPay sold some bikes and moved others to OExpress, a delivery product soon shut down. In April 2020, Zhou resigned as chairman of Beijing Kunlun to become full-time CEO of OPay — a sign that decision-making power sat outside Nigeria.

Even as the super app collapsed, OPay told TechCabal it was having its best year ever, claiming 5 million users and over 60% of Nigeria's mobile money transactions. That moment birthed today's payments-and-agent-banking OPay. By end-2020, Opera reported OPay's monthly transaction value exceeded $2 billion, a 4.5x increase.

What made it a unicorn?

In August 2021, OPay raised $400 million led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 at a $2 billion valuation, becoming Africa's third-largest startup worth over $1 billion. It remains the single-largest round secured by an Africa-based startup. OPay hired Olu Akanmu, a former FCMB retail banking executive director, as president and co-CEO of OPay Nigeria, and acquired a microfinance bank licence from the CBN to lend legally.

December 2022 brought its biggest gift: the CBN's redesigned naira and a January 2023 expiry date made cash scarce and broke commercial banks' apps. OPay, PalmPay and Moniepoint picked up customers because they worked. Akanmu stepped down in January 2024 after a clash of vision with leadership based outside Nigeria.

How did regulators push back?

By October 2023, OPay was Nigeria's most-downloaded app. Scale brought scrutiny. The Nigeria Data Protection Commission investigated claims OPay opened accounts without consent; OPay denied it and no outcome has been made public. In April 2024, the CBN barred OPay from onboarding new customers for six weeks, forcing it to block P2P crypto transfers, verify physical addresses across all tiers and update facial verification. The CBN then fined OPay ₦1 billion ($742,991) in Q2 2024 after a routine sector audit found compliance issues.

An August 2025 CBN circular ordered every PoS terminal geo-tagged within 60 days and locked to within 10 metres of the merchant's address. That same month, the CBN capped PoS agents' daily cash-outs at ₦1.2 million ($930) and individual customers' at ₦100,000 ($70). OPay weathered it all and drew 88% of its $536 million revenue from Nigeria.

Why did the IPO stall?

OPay confidentially filed a draft registration statement on February 12, made public in October. In April, Opera — which holds 8.6% of OPay — told investors it saw an 85% chance of a listing within two years. Confidence was earned: after losing $50.8 million in 2024, OPay posted a $72.5 million profit in 2025 on $536.3 million revenue, up 161%, with new loans up 285% to $938.3 million.

On May 1, Bloomberg reported OPay had hired Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan for a U.S. listing that could value it near $4 billion — double its 2021 mark. The public filing on October 9 showed first-half 2026 revenue of $467.1 million, up 136.5%, net income of $90.9 million, and lending, at $236.1 million, overtaking payments. Nigeria supplied 89.5% of revenue.

The prospectus flagged rising credit-loss provisions, Nigeria dependence, and an Indonesian lending arm held through contractual arrangements Indonesia does not expressly recognise. But it dismissed one risk that came back to bite: OPay said it was not required to obtain approval from the China Securities Regulatory Commission or complete filing procedures under China's 2023 overseas listing rules.

According to Bloomberg, a Chinese regulatory inquiry halted the IPO hours after pricing. OPay said it was confident the inquiry would be resolved satisfactorily "in the near future."

The redemption deadline gives OPay until the end of 2027 — roughly 14 months — to try again. Its record of bouncing back from Nigerian regulators is the playbook it will now have to run in Beijing.