A Bolt driver in Nigeria will likely ask you to pay via OPay at the end of a trip, while a local store is more likely to have a Moniepoint terminal at its checkout. Both fintechs, which hold microfinance banking licences, have become synonymous with scale in Nigeria’s payments market, carving out niches in consumer payments and merchant processing.

In 2025, Nigeria processed more than ₦1.2 quadrillion ($880.51 billion) worth of electronic transactions. Moniepoint and OPay accounted for a significant share of this activity, processing a combined $644.85 billion.

Moniepoint said it processed 14 billion transactions worth ₦412 trillion ($286.85 billion at ₦1,436.31/$ as of December 31, 2025) in 2025. OPay processed 62.3 billion transactions worth $358 billion. OPay processed 4.45 times as many transactions as Moniepoint, but Moniepoint’s average transaction value was $20.49, approximately 3.56 times OPay’s $5.75.

Moniepoint said it serves more than 20 million businesses and individuals, while OPay reported 50.1 million monthly active users.

These numbers offer a window into the operating economics of both companies: who moves more money, who makes more money from moving it, and who keeps more of what they make?

It is important to note that Moniepoint operates largely in Nigeria, with a recent expansion into Kenya. OPay operates in Indonesia, Egypt, and Pakistan, but derives most of its scale from Nigeria. It generated 88.1% of its revenue from the country in 2025.

What the average numbers show

Moniepoint’s average transaction value of $20.49 is approximately 3.56 times OPay’s $5.75.

This difference could reflect Moniepoint’s greater concentration of merchant payments, business transactions, or other relatively large payments. OPay’s lower average could reflect more frequent, lower-value consumer transactions.

These are hypotheses rather than confirmed explanations. The companies’ transaction disclosures do not provide enough detail to establish exactly what drives the difference.

There are other indicators of how frequently their customers use their platforms. OPay says its digital wallets were used an average of 209 times per user per month. Moniepoint said its cards were used 1.7 million times daily.

However, the total value passing through a payment platform is not the same as the revenue it earns. Their revenue depends on fees, commissions, lending, merchant services, and other income sources.

OPay disclosed $536.25 million in revenue in 2025. Moniepoint does not publicly disclose revenue figures.

One way to illustrate Moniepoint’s revenue potential is to examine OPay’s revenue relative to the value it processed. Its $536.25 million in revenue represented about 0.15% of its $358 billion in transaction value.

If Moniepoint generated revenue at the same rate, its $286.85 billion in transaction value would translate to approximately $430.28 million in revenue.

This is an illustrative scenario, not an estimate of Moniepoint’s actual revenue. The two companies have different transaction mixes, fee structures, and revenue sources.

Interactive Data Explainer

The Fintech Financial X-Ray

Inside the unit economics of OPay and Moniepoint.

1. Scale & Velocity 2. Revenue Conversion 3. Risk & Lending Transaction Volume Average Ticket Size OPay (Consumer Focus) 62.3B Transactions Processed Moniepoint (Merchant Focus) 14.0B Transactions Processed OPay processes 4.45 times as many transactions as Moniepoint, capturing the high-frequency velocity of everyday consumer spending.

The Revenue Information Gap

Visualising how $358 billion in volume converts into actual revenue for OPay, compared to Moniepoint’s undisclosed financials.

Moving money is not the same as making money. OPay converts its massive transaction volume into revenue at a rate of 0.15%, heavily subsidised by lending. Moniepoint’s revenue cannot be established from transaction value alone.

OPay’s Soaring Credit Risk

Expected credit loss provisions relative to loan financing revenue.

2024 ($71.5M Loan Rev) Prov: $24.8M 2025 ($260.3M Loan Rev) Loss Provision: $121.3M (46.6%) Retained Rev Consumer Pipeline Digital Wallet Consumer Txns Credit Assessment Consumer Loans Originated

$938.3M

to 4.6M unique borrowers. Merchant Pipeline POS Terminals Merchant Txns Cash-flow Data Working Capital Disbursed

₦1 Trillion+

in business loans.

The CBN Regulatory Ceiling

In June 2026, the CBN introduced new market-structure requirements targeting ecosystem dominance.

>25% Consumer Issuing → Max 15% Merchant Acquiring *Note: Expected credit loss provisions are accounting estimates of potential future losses, not realised cash defaults. OPay’s 20.66% metric represents its pre-tax profit margin, not net profit. The CBN thresholds indicate regulatory limits, not verified breaches by either company.

Loans are becoming another revenue engine

Both OPay and Moniepoint increased their lending activity in 2025, using the financial activity passing through their platforms to extend credit.

OPay originated $938.3 million in new loans in Nigeria, up 284.71% in one year.

Moniepoint, meanwhile, said it disbursed more than ₦1 trillion ($696.23 million) in loans to small businesses in 2025. In 2023, it disbursed $71 million in working capital loans.

Moniepoint uses its merchant relationships to extend business credit. Its terminals give it visibility into how much a business processes, how frequently it receives payments, and how its transaction activity changes over time.

This provides an alternative source of information for assessing a business that may not have conventional financial statements or sufficient collateral.

The company’s lending portfolio targets merchants, including provision stores, supermarkets, restaurants, and wholesale distributors. It says businesses that received its loans recorded an average 36% increase in transaction value after accessing credit.

OPay’s lending operation has a broader consumer-facing distribution advantage. Its wallet gives it access to millions of users who already transact frequently on the platform. In 2025, its quarterly unique borrowers in Nigeria reached 4.6 million, more than twice the 2.1 million recorded a year earlier.

While OPay has built much of its credit product around consumers, it is also looking to expand merchant lending, which it recently introduced. The company says merchant loans typically feature higher limits, lower rates, and longer tenors aligned with business cash flow cycles.

Both companies are effectively turning payment histories into credit intelligence, but they are applying that information to different customer segments.

For OPay, lending is already a significant contributor to revenue. In 2025, it generated $260.3 million in loan financing revenue, up from $71.5 million in 2024. This represented growth of approximately 264.1% and accounted for 48.5% of its total revenue.

But lending also carries risks. OPay’s provision for expected credit losses increased from $24.8 million in 2024 to $121.3 million in 2025, nearly five times the previous year’s figure.

The provision was approximately 46.6% of its loan-financing revenue. This is not the same as realised loan losses, but it shows the growing credit risk exposure accompanying the expansion of its lending business.

Moniepoint’s lending economics are not public, making it difficult to establish how much revenue its credit business generates or how much it spends managing defaults. The company claims that its non-performing loans (NPLs), loans for which principal or interest payments are overdue by 90 days or more, are small.

According to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), NPLs rose to 7% in 2025.

Profits

Processing billions of transactions and generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue is one thing. Turning that activity into profit is another.

For payment companies, scale comes with considerable costs: technology infrastructure, transaction processing, customer acquisition, regulatory compliance, fraud management, staff costs, and, increasingly, the cost of extending credit.

OPay generated $536.25 million in revenue in 2025 and ultimately made $110.79 million in income before taxes. That translates to a net profit margin of approximately 20.66%. In other words, it retained about 21 cents in profit per dollar of revenue.

Moniepoint does not disclose its revenue or profit figures. However, applying OPay’s revenue-to-transaction-value ratio and net profit margin to Moniepoint’s transaction value produces an estimated profit of $88.89 million. This is an indicative estimate, not a reported financial result, and assumes both companies have comparable revenue yields and cost structures.

The numbers show how OPay has built a high-frequency payments business and is increasingly extracting revenue from lending. Nearly half of its 2025 revenue came from loan financing, although rising complaints about high interest rates to cover credit-loss provisions indicate that this growth carries additional risk.

Moniepoint, on the other hand, has built a merchant-focused payments network that gives it access to business transaction data and opportunities to extend working capital. Its higher average transaction value and growing lending portfolio point to a different monetisation strategy: building deeper financial relationships with merchants rather than relying primarily on the frequency of everyday consumer payments.

Interactive Explainer

The ₦1,000 Journey

Explore the hidden infrastructure, commercial relationships, and data pipelines behind an everyday digital payment in Nigeria.

1. The Payment 2. Infrastructure 3. Relationships 4. The Business 5. The Data The Initiation A customer walks into a retail shop and purchases an item. They open their digital wallet to transfer the funds. Click the button to initiate the payment. Consumer ₦1k Merchant PAY ₦1,000 Behind the Screen That instant transfer traveled through a multi-layered digital architecture. Click the nodes below to expose the route. 1. Customer’s Wallet • 2. Payment Switch (NIBSS) • 3. Merchant Acquirer • 4. Settlement Account • Step 1 Customer’s Issuing Institution The customer initiates the transaction via their bank app or a mobile money wallet (like OPay). The issuer verifies the balance, debits the ₦1,000, and packages the data to send into the wider network.

Note:

If a customer uses an OPay wallet to scan an OPay POS, the transaction might settle entirely within OPay’s internal ledger, bypassing the national switch entirely. The Battle for the Transaction Different fintechs compete for different ends of the same payment. The lines between who owns the consumer and who owns the merchant are blurring.

Consumer & Merchant Play

OPay

built a massive base focusing on the sender’s consumer wallet, but they are also aggressively deploying POS terminals to capture the receiver. Upsell: Consumer loans, savings, and merchant settlement.

Merchant & Consumer Play

Moniepoint

became a giant by focusing on the receiver as an acquirer. Now, they are pushing personal banking apps to capture the consumer side too. Upsell: Working capital, expense cards, and personal banking. Value ≠ Revenue When the customer pays ₦1,000, no single payment company claims it as revenue. It is sliced into microscopic fees. Total Transaction ₦1,000 Merchant Settles Majority % in Fees Merchant Charge The acquirer charges a capped fee (or flat rate) to process the transfer. Switch Fees The acquirer splits that tiny fee with the central routing network. Payment as Intelligence One ₦1,000 payment generates a few kobo. But millions of payments generate a dataset capable of underwriting massive loan portfolios. Raw Data

• → Purchase frequency
• → Average basket size
• → Cash flow consistency

→ Credit Intelligence Fintechs use the relentless stream of incoming payments as proof of income, allowing them to instantly disburse loans.

Both companies have built considerable scale in Nigeria. But sustaining that position will increasingly depend on how they navigate a changing regulatory environment.

In June 2026, the CBN introduced new market-structure requirements that could constrain financial institutions seeking to dominate both consumer payments and merchant acquiring.

In a circular, the regulator stated that any licensed financial institution controlling more than 25% of the consumer-issuing market would be restricted to a maximum of 15% market share in merchant-acquiring activities.

For OPay and Moniepoint, this introduces another variable into an already competitive market. Their ability to grow will depend not only on how many transactions they process or how much revenue they generate, but also on how they position themselves across the layers of Nigeria’s payments infrastructure.