The IPO Buzz: OPay Ltd. (OPAY) of Nigeria Prices IPO at $19 – Low End

SoftBank-backed OPay Ltd  (OPAY), the parent of Nigeria’s No. 1 digital banking platform, priced its IPO at $19.00 – the low end of its range – and sold 16 million American Depositary Shares (ADS) to raise $304 million on Thursday night, Oct. 29, 2026, OPay’s stock is expected to start trading tomorrow – Friday, Oct. 30 – on the New York Stock Exchange. Each ADS represents 10 ordinary shares. OPay’s IPO had a price range of $19.00 to $21.00, according to the prospectus.

At pricing, OPay had a market cap of about $4.0 billion.

Citigroup, Deutsche Bank Securities, Standard Bank and CICC were the joint book-runners.

Nine cornerstone investors – hailing from London to Lagos – had indicated an interest in buying up to $270 million of stock – about 84.4 percent of the IPO, according to the prospectus.

Among the cornerstone investors: The Redwheel Group’s RWC Asset Management LLP and RWC Asset Advisors (US) LLC were in for up to US$50 million and  the Coronation Africa Frontiers Fund (acting through its discretionary investment manager, Coronation Investment Management International (Pty) Ltd) – was in for up to US$50 million, according to the prospectus.

OPay Ltd., based in Singapore, is a holding company. It owns and operates OPay, a digital banking and FinTech platform in Nigeria and other emerging markets.

In Nigeria, OPay is the No. 1 digital banking platform. OPay was Nigeria’s No. 2 app across all categories based on daily active users as of July 31, 2026, the prospectus said.

“We are the No. 1 finance app in Africa and the Middle East with a 9.9 percent market share based on monthly active users in the six months that ended on June 30, 2026, according to Frost & Sullivan,” OPay said in the prospectus. “We also serve customers in Indonesia, mostly by providing loan facilitation as well as in Egypt, where we provide merchant acquisition services, and in Pakistan, where we provide merchant acquisition and consumer wallet services.”

SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led a $400 million fund-raising round in 2021 that gave OPay a valuation of $2 billion, Bloomberg reported. Chinese investors HSG and Long-Z Capital participated in that round, according to Bloomberg.

James Zhou, the Chinese billionaire, founded OPay in 2017. He is OPay’s non-executive chairman and its largest shareholder with a pre-IPO stake of 21 percent, the prospectus said. He is also the chairman of Opera Limited, whose stock is listed on the NASDAQ, and he is the founder of Kunlun Tech  Co., Ltd.

OPay Ltd. conducted a concurrent private placement of about $200 million of ADS with Stanbic Africa Holdings (a Standard Bank subsidiary), the prospectus said. (Note: The private placement’s total volume may be less than $200 million, based on variable formulas included in the prospectus.)

Financial Snapshot: Net income of $49.85 million on revenue of $805.83 million for the 12 months that ended on  June 30, 2026 

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