Nigerian fintech OPay said on Tuesday it had achieved 99.9% platform uptime as it stepped up investments in artificial intelligence-powered security and payment infrastructure, outlining plans to expand its user base to 1 billion globally by 2031.
The company said its long-term growth strategy centres on building resilient payment systems capable of maintaining uninterrupted services during network disruptions while expanding beyond its existing markets.
Speaking at an OPay media briefing in Lagos, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Technology Officer Dotun Adekunle said the company had invested in redundant infrastructure and automatic failover systems that reroute transactions when payment channels experience outages.
“These investments have enabled OPay to process transactions in less than one second on average through a network supported by more than 1,000 application programming interfaces (APIs),” he said.
“When a system breaks down, another one picks up automatically,” Adekunle said, adding that any service disruption would amount to less than one hour over an entire year.
The fintech also said it had expanded its use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to strengthen fraud prevention, introducing features such as facial verification for high-risk transactions, an emergency account lock, transaction shields and an AI-powered anti-scam system designed to detect suspicious transfers before they are completed.
Chief Commercial Officer Elizabeth Wang said OPay, which currently operates in Nigeria, Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia, plans to enter additional markets as part of its expansion strategy. She said the company aims to reach one billion users by 2031 by leveraging technology to make financial services more accessible across emerging markets.
Founded in 2018, OPay has become one of Africa’s largest digital payments platforms, offering mobile wallets, merchant payments, transfers and other financial services.
The company has previously said its long-term vision includes serving one billion users and supporting millions of merchants across emerging markets.
