Opay closes business, provides relief materials
Now the company will focus on its FINTECH business, which has always been its core.
Opay announced this afternoon that It will close some of its business divisions (for now) to focus only on financial technology services, and provide relief materials for the less privilege in this time of Coronavirus.
In a press statement, the company, as seen by Nairametrics, was primarily blamed for the development of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a recent ruling by the Lagos state government that banned commercial motorcycles in most of the Lagos Metropolitan area.
The business units that have been suspended by the company include all of its ride platforms (ORide and OCar), as well as OExpress, its delivery business.
Opay also noted that companies around the world have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic, which has caused rippling economic consequences around the world. The company said that it foresees the negative consequences of the pandemic and has already started restructuring long before that. According to the company’s statement, this final restructuring is expected to have a very minimal impact on its business as a whole. Part of the statement read::
“We can confirm that some of our business units, including ride-hailing Services ORide, OCar, and our logistics service OExpress, will be suspended. This is largely due to the harsh business conditions that affected many Nigerian companies, including ours, during this COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown and government ban.
“All over the world, the ride-sharing business has been severely affected by the pandemic. But a few months ago, anticipating this problem, OPay already took proactive steps to restructure our business to divert attention from travel. It is worth noting that this final restructuring has minimal impact on OPay as a whole.”
In the meantime, Opay will focus on its FINTECH service, providing payment solutions to Nigerian merchants within the e-Commerce space. Interestingly, while the Chinese company is known to most Nigerians for its driveway services, the core of its business has always been FINTECH.
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In fact, all these other businesses that have just been suspended were created with the intention of consolidating the payments business.
“It is important to clarify that ride-sharing has always been just one part and not the main part of Opay’s diversified business in Nigeria, in fact Opay has invested more and seen an accelerated growth in its commitment to Nigeria’s financial and technological integration,”the company explained.
As a full-fledged FINTECH firm and already a major player in the space, Opay will now continue to compete with companies such as Paga, Paystack and even Flutterwave.
