International fintech company OPay to start operations in Pakistan

OPay, an international fintech company, has decided to start its operations in Pakistan and is expected to launch its services within 3 months.

OPay is a one-stop mobile-based digital financial platform for payments, transfers, loans, savings and other banking services based in Norway. It is operational in many emerging markets including, Africa and Asia and includes countries such as Nigeria, Egypt, and now it will begin operating in Pakistan.

The company has been recognized as one of Top 200 Global Financial Technology Companies by CNBC. In the list, OPay has joined the likes of Ant Group, Tencent, PayPal, Stripe, Klarna, and Revolut. The company just started offering its digital wallet services in 2018 and has emerged as a unicorn startup in the fintech circles.

OPay acquired FINJA and the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has approved the acquisition just recently, allowing the company to start its operations in Pakistan. It is important to note that FINJA is one of two companies in Pakistan to receive a full Electronic Money Institutions (EMI) licence from SBP.

In a recent statement, OPay confirmed the acquisition nod by SBP and said that it wanted to replicate its digital wallet offering in Pakistan, which had been successfully implemented in other countries. The company has been valued at $2 billion and it wants to become a full-fledged digital bank in Pakistan. The company will have steep competition with the likes of EasyPaisa, JazzCash as well as traditional bank of Pakistan offering some form of digital payment solutions.

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OPay plans to expand to 1.6 million users as well as additional user-base through POS machine infrastructure. OPay is betting on the large unbanked population of the country as a means to success in Pakistan as it believes that the demand for digital wallets is unmet in the Pakistani market.