OPay has 40m monthly active users in Nigeria, roughly 1 in 3 adults, and until now almost none of them could be billed automatically by a foreign company. That changed on Thursday, when EBANX, the Brazil-founded payments processor, said it is the first global payments company to go live with OPay Direct Debit.
The mechanics are simple. A customer approves a merchant once inside the OPay app, and the merchant can then collect later charges without the customer typing in payment details again. For a streaming service, a software subscription or a cloud tool selling into Lagos, that is the difference between a renewal and a lapsed account.
Why a wallet beats a card in Nigeria
Subscriptions run on cards almost everywhere else. In Nigeria only 5% of adults hold a credit card, according to World Bank data cited by EBANX, while mobile phone penetration sits at 84%. EBANX's own analysis puts digital wallets and bank transfers at 65% of e-commerce volume, and estimates that 95% of online spending comes from people without a credit card.
So a global merchant that only accepts cards is fishing in a pond of about 5% of adults. Plugging into OPay, at 1 in 3 adults, widens that pond about 6.7x, at least on paper.
OPay brings real scale to the deal. The company reported $358bn of gross transaction value in 2025, up 115% from $166.2bn, and revenue of $536.3m, 2.6x the $205.7m of 2024. Nigeria supplied 88.1% of that revenue. Monthly active users rose 57% to 39.3m, so Thursday's 40m figure points to much slower growth this year, which is what you would expect once a wallet already reaches 1 in 3 adults.
What it means for merchants and OPay
For EBANX, Nigeria becomes the 13th emerging market where it offers recurring payments through a local method, alongside Pix in Brazil, UPI in India and Capitec Pay in South Africa. For OPay, which has been preparing for a possible US listing at a valuation reported around $4bn, recurring merchant billing is the kind of sticky, repeat revenue investors like to see.
The catch is that a direct debit is only as good as the balance behind it. A wallet that is empty on renewal day fails just like a declined card, and Nigerian households squeezed by high prices may cancel subscriptions as fast as they sign up.
EBANX has handed foreign merchants a cleaner door into Nigeria's 40m-strong wallet base. Whether those wallets hold enough money on the 1st of each month will decide if this becomes a revenue line or a press release.
Figures are as reported at the time of writing. STATART news is written by Frank Brother (Markets), Christina Amgbari (Insights) and Ebipadei Joseph (Lifestyle), and checked before publication.