Standard Bank Group is in talks to buy a stake in Nigerian fintech giant OPay. The South African lender is Africa’s largest by assets. The move comes ahead of OPay’s planned listing on a US stock exchange.
People familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that Standard Bank wants to close the deal before OPay goes public. However, talks remain at an early stage. No final agreement has been reached yet.
OPay is working with Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase on its New York listing. The listing could value the company at around 4 billion dollars. That figure is roughly double the 2 billion dollar valuation OPay reached in 2021, after a 400 million dollar Series C round.
The Lagos based payments company was founded in 2018. It is backed by SoftBank Group and Sequoia Capital. Today, OPay serves as many as 50 million users, agents and merchants. Its services include payments, transfers, bill payments and merchant tools. The company also runs operations in Egypt and Pakistan.
The talks come at a strong moment for OPay. Last year, the company turned profitable. Its transaction volume more than doubled to 358 billion dollars, up from 166.2 billion dollars in 2024. That marks a 115 percent jump in just one year.
Still, neither company has confirmed deal details. OPay declined to comment. Standard Bank said it does not comment on market speculation. But the bank added that it remains committed to delivering value across its markets.
So why does this deal matter for Standard Bank? A stake in OPay would give the bank direct exposure to one of Africa’s fastest growing finance platforms. Standard Bank already serves around 20 million customers. It holds total assets of about 232.5 billion dollars as of June 2026. Yet the bank has long relied on branch banking.
A foothold in a mobile first platform like OPay could change that. It would give Standard Bank a channel to millions of customers who have skipped traditional banking entirely. Many of those customers are reached through its Stanbic IBTC subsidiary in West Africa.
SEE ALSO:Mastercard and Moniepoint Partner to Expand Cross Border Payments Across Africa
The bigger picture stretches beyond this one deal. Mobile money operators across sub-Saharan Africa processed 1.4 trillion dollars in transactions in 2025. That is 66 percent of global mobile money activity, according to the GSM Association. Meanwhile, McKinsey estimates African fintech revenue could reach 47 billion dollars by 2028.
This growth has drawn attention from banks racing to secure a foothold before valuations climb higher. And OPay is not alone in this race. PalmPay and Airtel Africa’s mobile money unit are also chasing growth capital. As a result, competition for investor attention is heating up.
Timing matters here too. Companies often want big name investors locked in before they hit public markets. Doing so builds confidence. It can also help set the tone for a stock’s debut.
A tie up between South Africa’s largest banking group and Nigeria’s leading mobile money provider could signal something bigger. It may point to a shift in how legacy banks respond to fintech competition across the continent. Many banks have so far chosen to build rival products instead. Others have opted for partnerships rather than equity stakes.
For now, the outcome rests on ongoing talks. Both companies caution that terms are not final. So the deal could still fall through.
