How Chinese company lead POS Business in Nigeria

 OPay and Palmpay, two Chinese-owned digital banking platforms, are leading the Point of Sale (PoS) market in Nigeria, with both accounting for over a million mobile banking agents.

OPay, a fintech company that started business in 2018 following an acquisition of a local payment platform, now leads the PoS market with 563,262 agents, according to data published in Nigeria Financial Services Report by Intelpoint. 

PalmPay, in a recent announcement, said it had grown its agent network to 500,000. The total number of banking and mobile money agents is estimated at over 2 million, according to the 2023 State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money by the GSM Association.

The implication is that both OPay and Palmpay account for at least 50 percent of the agency banking market in Nigeria. Moniepoint, with 322,266 (Intelpoint data), and MTN (264,000, according to company data) round out the top four leaders in the market.

The dominance of OPay and Palmpay comes from different factors, with the top being funding, according to some experts.

“Their success can be attributed to first their financial strength. Top players must have deep resources. With the Chinese investing via OPay and Palmpay, and Moniepoint being able to raise a series of funds through the international venture capital market, they are able to actually penetrate the market and operate in other African markets.” said Victor Olojo, national president of the Association of Mobile Money and Banking Agents of Nigeria (AMMBAN).