On Friday, October 17, 2025, Nigerian fintech OPay, held the grand finale of the OPay Security Challenge at its Lagos headquarters.
The event saw the roll-out of its new security features, alongside the announcement of the winners of its MyOPay Security Vote Challenge.
OPay’s event was attended by several Nigerian celebrities including Nollywood award-winning actress, Funke Akindele, alongside several content creators including Samuel Perry Animashaun, popularly known as Broda Shaggi; Olayiwola Isaac, also known as Layi Wasabi; and Chukwuebuka Emmanuel also known as Brain Jotter.
“Our mission is to make financial service more inclusive through technology. That’s why at OPay, we invest a lot and will continue to doing so in security products so that we can continue to protect our customers,” Elizabeth Wang, Chief Commercial Officer at OPay, said.
Speaking at the event, Nollywood actress Funke Akindele commended OPay for their innovation and for living up to the trust of their customers.
“You are protecting our money and giving us [customers] money again. You are also engaging the young people out there with quality contents online. Even giving ₦50,000 to ten people and then ₦1 million. It’s amazing,” Akindele said.
“I’m always telling people, even before I was part of the campaign, if you are with any vendor and you don’t have an OPay account, you are not serious,” Nigerian influencer Layi Wasabi told fans at the event.
The Location Guard
At the event, OPay unveiled a new advanced security feature called the Location Guard, making it the app’s eighth security feature; others are Emergency Lock, Subscription Control, Night Guard, Scam Alert, Large Transaction Shield, Double Confirmation and USSD lock features.
The Location Guard is designed to protect a user’s account from unauthorised access and transactions, especially when a user’s phone is stolen or if their details are compromised.
“This is not just a feature; it’s a saviour to people,” Brain Jotter says.
It allows users set their preferred primary geographic location which may be the area of residence, city or state. The Location Guard also adds an extra layer of security that traditional passwords and PINs do not.
“With the Location Guard, you can select where you are; once the phone goes outside of that location, OPay will lock [the account] it. Only your face will be able to unlock it,” Elizabeth Wang said.
OPay’s security challenge
The MyOPay Security Challenge was a major social media campaign launched by OPay to raise awareness about the in-app safety tools and to encourage users to understand and utilise the features.
Marking the end of the ten-week security campaign, OPay rewarded four grand prize winners — one each from Instagram, X (Twitter), Facebook, and TikTok — with ₦1million.
The winners were Adegoke Oluwatoyin Adewunmi, Onyinye Mercy Ekuogo, Ezeonwuka Greatness, and Charles Chinaemere Ihugba.
Over 2,000 Nigerians were celebrated and rewarded throughout the ten weeks, with weekly cash prizes of ₦50,000 being given out to participants.
“We will continue to launch more security products, as we still need to educate the whole society, the users,” Wang said.
