Standard Bank is in talks to buy a stake in OPay Digital Services before the Nigerian payments company lists in the United States, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. The bank wants the stake in place ahead of the listing. No agreement has been reached, and the people cautioned there is no guarantee the deal gets done.
What OPay is
Founded in 2018, OPay has grown into one of Nigeria's biggest payment platforms, serving as many as 50 million users. On the street it is best known for its army of green handheld card machines. The company turned profitable last year, and the value of transactions running through it more than doubled to $358bn, according to a company document seen by Bloomberg. It also operates in Egypt and Pakistan. SoftBank and Sequoia Capital are among its backers, and it is working with Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan on the New York listing.
Why a bank would want in
The size of the market explains the interest better than the deal terms do. Mobile-money operators in sub-Saharan Africa handled $1.4 trillion of transactions in 2025, according to the GSM Association, which was 66% of global activity. McKinsey estimates revenue at African fintechs could reach $47bn by 2028. Other operators are raising money to chase the same growth, among them Airtel Africa's mobile-money business and PalmPay.
For Standard Bank, Africa's biggest lender by assets, a stake in OPay would be a position on payment infrastructure it does not own and did not build. Banks and payment platforms on the continent have been shifting from competing to coexisting: the bank brings capital, licences and institutional trust, the platform brings distribution, speed and millions of digital customers. OPay has become a beneficiary of Africa's growing population and its move to mobile payments and digital banking.
The listing itself is the pressure point. Buying before a company prices its shares on a public market is a different transaction to buying after, and the reporting is explicit that Standard Bank is seeking the stake pre-listing. OPay would get a major African bank on its register just as it puts its case to global investors.
Neither side is confirming anything. OPay declined to comment, and Standard Bank said it does not comment on market speculation, while remaining committed to delivering value to its clients across all markets.
