Hola,
Victoria from Techpoint here,
Here’s what I’ve got for you today:
- OPay swings to $72M profit
- Itana signs Mr Eazi’s Choplife
- South Africa moves closer to digital ID
OPay swings to $72M profit
OPay has finally crossed a line that African fintechs spend years chasing: it made money. The fintech swung to a $72.47 million net profit in FY2025, from a $50.98 million loss the year before, while revenue jumped 161% to $536.25 million. The numbers come from audited 2025 financial statements included in an investment document tied to OPay’s planned IPO.
The growth wasn’t just coming from more people downloading the app. OPay’s gross transaction value more than doubled to $358 billion, up 115%, while monthly active users climbed 57% to 39.3 million. Lending also became a much bigger part of the business: new loans originated jumped 285% to $938.3 million, while the number of quarterly unique borrowers in Nigeria more than doubled to 4.6 million. In other words, OPay is getting more customers to use more of its financial products, rather than relying solely on payments.
And this is crucial because OPay has been one of the biggest stories in Nigeria’s fintech boom, but rapid growth has always had to be matched with a path to sustainability. The latest numbers suggest that is finally happening: operating income moved from a $35.1 million loss in 2024 to a $107.1 million profit, while non-GAAP EBITDA went from a $33.6 million loss to a $113.2 million profit. Operating cash flow also nearly tripled to $152.2 million. So this isn’t just a paper profit; the company is generating considerably more cash from its operations too.
What’s more, OPay is also preparing investors for its next big chapter. Reports in May 2026 said the company was preparing for a potential US IPO, with a target valuation of around $4 billion and major banks, including JPMorgan, Citi and Deutsche Bank, reportedly working on the offering. Now these 2025 numbers give potential investors a much stronger story to look at: a fintech that has grown rapidly, reached tens of millions of users and, importantly, turned profitable.
But Nigeria remains the heart of the story. Although OPay operates across Nigeria, Indonesia, Egypt and Pakistan, Nigeria generated 88.1% of its 2025 revenue. The company ended the year with $274.3 million in cash, up 162%, and about 70% of its Nigerian monthly active wallet users were using more than five products as of March 2026. OPay’s journey from a payments-focused fintech to a broader financial-services platform is therefore becoming clearer, and with profitability now on the books, its possible IPO suddenly looks a lot more interesting.
Itana signs Mr Eazi’s Choplife
Itana is getting a rather interesting new tenant: Choplife, the entertainment and media company founded by Nigerian musician and entrepreneur Mr Eazi. Announced on August 13, 2026, the deal means Choplife is joining Itana’s digital free trade zone as it looks to scale its business across Africa. And this is interesting because Choplife isn’t your typical software startup. The company operates entertainment, media, technology and gaming businesses across 12 African markets, including Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda and Tanzania.
For Choplife, the attraction is pretty straightforward: it wants to build across Africa without having to move its corporate home to somewhere like Delaware or London. Mr Eazi says about 99% of what the company creates is made in Africa, even though its products are consumed across the continent and globally. Itana offers things such as tax incentives, multi-currency banking and easier capital repatriation, which could make it easier for Choplife to manage a business operating across multiple African markets. The company plans to use the move to expand further into Francophone Africa and Southern Africa, while also producing film and media content from within Itana.
Itana launched its digital free trade zone in 2021 to give African digital businesses some of the advantages that have traditionally pushed founders to incorporate abroad. It operates under the Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA), but unlike the traditional special economic zones built around manufacturing and physical exports, Itana is designed for businesses exporting things like software, online services, media and intellectual property. More than 50 companies have established operations there, according to Itana, so bringing in a company like Choplife shows the zone is trying to stretch beyond the usual “African tech startup” definition.
Itana has been trying to build the infrastructure for digital businesses to operate from Nigeria while serving customers elsewhere, rather than forcing them to create offshore structures just to make fundraising, banking or cross-border expansion easier. In 2024, the Africa Finance Corporation announced support for the development of Itana’s digital economic zone and planned technology campus in Lagos. Itana has also worked with startup programmes such as Accelerate Africa to help founders incorporate within the zone.
So, Choplife joining Itana is more than just another company registration. It is a small test of whether Nigeria can become the corporate home for African companies that are global by design. And the creative economy is an interesting place to test that idea because music, film, gaming and intellectual property increasingly move across borders just like software does. If Itana can make that cross-border business easier while keeping companies anchored in Nigeria, it could attract a much wider pool of African businesses, not just fintechs and SaaS startups, but the next generation of African entertainment companies too.
South Africa moves closer to digital ID
South Africa’s digital ID plans are moving from policy documents to something a little more tangible. Home Affairs is now working with other government departments on a prototype for the country’s digital ID system, Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber said yesterday, August 12, 2026. This is happening while the department processes public comments on draft regulations published in May. The proposed digital ID would be an official digital credential, backed by biometric verification and would have the same legal validity as a physical ID.
Instead of constantly pulling out your Smart ID card or going to a Home Affairs office, you could eventually use your phone to prove who you are and access government and other services. Under the proposed rules, South Africans aged 16 and above would be eligible, with enrolment requiring an existing identity record and a biometric liveness check. The digital ID would be available through the planned MyMzansi platform, and Home Affairs says enrolment would be free, although the credential would need to be renewed every five years.
Why should we care? Because this could become much bigger than simply replacing a plastic ID card with an app. The government wants digital identity to become part of its broader push to deliver services remotely, its “Home Affairs at Home” idea, while making identity verification faster and helping tackle identity fraud. The system is also expected to eventually work across public and private-sector services, potentially affecting everything from government services to banking and other digital transactions.
But getting here has taken longer than originally planned. The MyMzansi Digital Public Infrastructure roadmap envisaged a functional national digital ID system by the end of 2025, but that deadline was missed. By January 2026, the programme was reported to be behind schedule, with the legal and policy framework still being worked on. Then, on May 5, 2026, Home Affairs published draft amendments to the Identification Regulations, formally setting out how digital identity credentials could be issued and verified, with public comments invited.
Now the prototype suggests the government is actually building the technology while the regulatory process continues. Schreiber has previously said the department already had some of the core biometric technology in place through its online citizenship services, and that this would form part of the digital ID system. The big test now is whether South Africa can turn the prototype and draft rules into a system people can trust, particularly when it comes to biometric data, privacy, security, and access. If it works, the goal is bigger than a digital ID card: it could become one of the building blocks for how South Africans prove who they are and access services in a much more digital country.
In case you missed them
- This Nigerian innovator built a bookkeeping tool for traders, in the language they actually speak
- CBN’s second sandbox cohort quietly opens a testing ground for permission-based data sharing
- This Nigerian engineer is using simulations to train aviation workers against cyberattack
What I’m watching
- You don’t grow into a new life… you decide into it | Dianna Fioravanti | TEDxCambridge University
- Wellbeing Intelligence: Mental health as a skill | Prof Thomas Roulet | TEDxCambridge University
Opportunities
- Flutterwave is hiring for several roles. Apply here.
- Moniepoint is hiring for over 100 roles. Apply here.
- Follow Techpoint Africa’s WhatsApp channel to stay on top of the latest trends and news in the African tech space here.
Have a fun weekend!
Victoria Fakiya for Techpoint Africa
