Chinese billionaire Zhou Yahui's OPay wins up to $200 million Standard Bank backing

Standard Bank Group Ltd., Africa's largest lender by assets, has agreed to invest up to $200 million in OPay, the Nigerian mobile money company controlled by Chinese tycoon Zhou Yahui, as the fintech prepares to list its shares in New York.

The Johannesburg-based bank said on Oct. 12 that it had signed a subscription agreement to buy shares through its subsidiary Stanbic Africa Holdings in a private placement that will run alongside OPay's initial public offering. Bloomberg reported that the investment would be about $185 million. The stake will be capped at 4.99% of OPay after the listing, and the bank has agreed to hold the shares for at least 12 months.

The deal depends on the IPO going ahead and on regulatory approvals. Lungisa Fuzile, who heads Standard Bank's operations outside South Africa and is a former director-general of the South African Treasury, will join OPay's board as a non-executive director for as long as the bank holds at least 2.5%.

The two companies also signed a nonbinding agreement in August to explore working together on digital banking, merchant card payments, lending and remittances across Africa, and on selling Standard Bank products through OPay's app. No commercial deals have been agreed.

A $4 billion listing

OPay has filed to list American depositary shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker "OPAY." Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Standard Bank and China International Capital Corp. are leading the offering, and Semafor reported that the company is aiming for a valuation of about $4 billion, with pricing expected around mid-November. It would be the first US listing of a fintech whose customers are mostly in Nigeria.

The filing shows a business growing fast. Revenue more than doubled to $467.1 million in the first half of 2026, and net profit rose to $90.9 million from $21.7 million a year earlier. Lending has overtaken payments as its biggest source of revenue. OPay processed $339.1 billion of payments in the six months to June and had 50.1 million monthly active users at the end of July. Nigeria accounts for almost 90% of revenue.

OPay was founded in 2017, launched in Nigeria in 2018 and is headquartered in Singapore. It also operates in Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia. Its last funding round, a $400 million raise led by SoftBank Group Corp.'s Vision Fund 2 in 2021, valued it at $2 billion.

The man behind OPay

Zhou is OPay's largest shareholder, with 21.3% held through two investment companies, according to the filing. At the targeted $4 billion valuation, that stake would be worth about $852 million. Opera Ltd., the Norwegian web browser company that Zhou controls, owns about 8.6%, SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 holds 6.6% and IDG Capital 6%.

Zhou, 49, studied engineering at Tsinghua University and founded Beijing Kunlun Tech Co. in 2008, building it into one of China's best-known online gaming and internet companies. Kunlun bought a majority of the dating app Grindr in 2016 before US national security regulators forced its sale, completed in 2020 for $608 million. A Kunlun-led group bought Opera the same year, and OPay was spun out of the browser maker's push into African markets.

He served as Opera's chief executive from 2016 until October 2025 and remains its executive chairman.

Standard Bank's bet on fintech

The investment amounts to less than 1% of Standard Bank's market value and gives the lender a foothold in one of Africa's fastest-growing digital finance platforms. The bank already operates in Nigeria through Stanbic IBTC Holdings and is present in 21 African countries.

"Standard Bank's banking expertise and African footprint complement OPay's digital financial services platform," Group Chief Executive Officer Sim Tshabalala said in a statement.