Ask a Bolt driver in Nigeria how to pay and you are likely to be pointed to OPay. Walk into a local shop and there is a good chance the checkout has a Moniepoint terminal. Both companies hold microfinance bank licences, and both have become shorthand for scale in Nigerian payments, with OPay strong in consumer payments and Moniepoint in merchant processing.
Nigeria processed more than ₦1.2 quadrillion (about $880.51 billion) in electronic transactions in 2025. Moniepoint and OPay together handled about $644.85 billion of that, according to figures the companies have published. Those numbers say a lot about who moves the most money, who earns the most from it, and who keeps the most of what it earns.
The headline numbers
Dollar conversions for Moniepoint use ₦1,436.31 per dollar, the rate at December 31, 2025. The two companies also differ in geography. Moniepoint operates mainly in Nigeria and has recently entered Kenya. OPay also operates in Indonesia, Egypt and Pakistan, but Nigeria supplied 88.1% of its 2025 revenue.
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Volume versus value
OPay processed 4.45 times as many transactions as Moniepoint. Moniepoint’s average transaction, however, was about 3.56 times OPay’s.
A likely reason is mix: Moniepoint handles more merchant and business payments, which tend to be larger, while OPay handles many smaller consumer payments. That is a hypothesis, not a finding, because the companies do not publish enough detail to confirm it. Usage figures point the same way on frequency. OPay says its wallets were used an average of 209 times per user per month, and Moniepoint says its cards were used 1.7 million times a day.
Value processed is also not the same as revenue. Income comes from fees, commissions, merchant services, lending and other sources.
OPay’s $536.25 million in revenue was about 0.15% of the $358 billion it processed. If Moniepoint earned the same rate, its $286.85 billion would produce roughly $430 million. This is an illustration only. Moniepoint does not publish revenue, and the two firms have different fee structures and transaction mixes.
Lending is becoming a second engine
Both companies expanded credit sharply in 2025.
- OPay originated $938.3 million in new loans in Nigeria, up 284.71% year on year. Its quarterly unique borrowers rose to 4.6 million from 2.1 million. It earned $260.3 million in loan financing revenue, up about 264% from $71.5 million in 2024, and equal to 48.5% of total revenue. It has also started offering merchant loans, with higher limits, lower rates and longer tenors.
- Moniepoint said it disbursed more than ₦1 trillion (about $696.23 million) to small businesses in 2025, against $71 million in working capital loans in 2023. It uses terminal data, such as how much a business processes and how often, to judge risk for merchants without formal accounts or collateral. It says borrowers saw an average 36% rise in transaction value after receiving credit.
In both cases the payment history becomes credit data, though each applies it to a different customer group.
Growth in lending carries risk. OPay’s provision for expected credit losses rose to $121.3 million from $24.8 million, nearly fivefold, and equal to about 46.6% of its loan financing revenue. A provision is not the same as realised losses, but it shows how much credit risk the business now carries. Moniepoint does not publish its lending economics, though it says its non-performing loans are small. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) reported that industry NPLs rose to 7% in 2025.
From revenue to profit
OPay reported $110.79 million in income before tax on $536.25 million of revenue, a margin of about 20.66%, or roughly 21 cents of every dollar. Moniepoint does not disclose profit. Applying OPay’s revenue yield and margin to Moniepoint’s transaction value gives about $88.89 million, but that is an indicative estimate and not a reported result.
The pattern is clear. OPay has built a high-frequency payments business and increasingly earns from lending, though higher interest-rate complaints and rising loss provisions show the risks. Moniepoint is building deeper merchant relationships, with larger payments and credit linked to business activity, rather than relying mainly on everyday consumer payments.
A new rule could shape the next phase
Regulation may matter as much as scale. In a circular dated June 15, 2026, the CBN introduced market-structure rules for the payments sector. They bar any licensed entity, whether alone or as part of a group of related companies, from holding more than 25 per cent of consumer issuing and more than 15 per cent of merchant acquiring at the same time, and the reverse also applies. Consumer issuing covers customer-facing activities such as issuing cards or payment instruments. The caps are measured over a rolling 12-month period.
How market share will be measured, and how companies will adjust, remain open questions. For OPay and Moniepoint, growth may depend less on how many transactions they process and more on where they choose to lead across Nigeria’s payments infrastructure.
