Opera Limited, an early investor in OPay, one of Africa’s largest fintechs, is launching a stablecoin app, MiniPay, on the continent.
According to a statement seen by Techpoint Africa, MiniPay, which used to be embedded in the Opera Mini browser, will now have a standalone app, a lightweight stablecoin wallet on iOS and Android.
It said the wallet, which was built into Opera Mini, has 7 million users and is growing strongly in Nigeria and Kenya. It is aimed at making stablecoins like USDT, USDC, and cUSD easy to use for the average smartphone owner with instant peer-to-peer transfers and fees below $0.01.
While Opera is just announcing the standalone app, it has been available on the Google Play Store since December 2024 with over 500,000 downloads.
Opera’s fintech ambitions in Africa aren’t new. The company is a major backer of OPay, where it owns a 9.4% stake valued at $258 million as of 2024.
Now it is jumping into the stablecoin trend that is sweeping across Africa. Even fintechs like Flutterwave and Onafriq have joined the stablecoin wave, announcing their partnership with Circle Payment Network (CPN), a network launched by Circle, the company behind USDC stablecoin.
Stablecoin transactions across Africa have been ramping up since 2022. Nigeria alone received over $56 billion in cryptocurrencies between July 2022 and June 2023.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, stablecoins now represent approximately 43% of all crypto transaction volume, overtaking Bitcoin’s share.
This surge in stablecoin use is driven by the need for stable, dollar-pegged assets in economies grappling with inflation and currency devaluation.
However, as usage increases, regulation will get tighter. Nigeria’s SEC has already announced it now perceives cryptocurrencies as securities. So far, it seems it’ll leave the CBN to take a stance on stablecoins.
While Opera told Techpoint Africa that it has not announced plans to integrate with Opera-backed products like OPay, the fintech is perfectly positioned as an onramp and an offramp partner.
