OPay, a leading fintech company in Nigeria, is deploying artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies to combat digital fraud as the country’s digital payments ecosystem expands and cyber threats become more sophisticated.
The fintech company disclosed this at its media parley held in Lagos on Thursday, where executives outlined measures being adopted to improve the security of digital transactions and strengthen consumer confidence in the country’s cashless economy.
Speaking at the event, Elizabeth Wang, chief commercial officer of OPay, said trust has become central to the adoption of digital financial services, adding that financial inclusion cannot be achieved without robust security.
She said OPay’s mission remains “making financial services more inclusive through technology,” while aspiring to become the most respected and trusted financial technology company that creates social value.
According to her, the company has continued to invest in information security as part of efforts to build payment solutions that are safe, stable and accessible.
“When people trust digital financial services, they use them more confidently. That trust becomes the foundation for economic growth,” Wang said.
She added that OPay’s investments extend beyond payments to education, innovation, financial inclusion and community development.
Also speaking, Dotun Adekunle, chief operating officer and chief technology officer of OPay, said the company’s technology strategy is driven by solving customer problems rather than simply deploying new technologies.
“Every feature in this story began as a customer’s frustration. Where the market said, ‘that’s just how payments work here,’ we treated it as an engineering problem waiting to be solved,” he said.
Adekunle said the company invested in redundant payment infrastructure and automatic failover systems to address failed or delayed transfers, resulting in a transaction success rate of 99.9 percent.
He also said OPay has redesigned its payment infrastructure to enable transaction confirmations in less than one second, reducing uncertainty for users and merchants.
According to him, the company’s fraud prevention system relies on risk-based verification rather than applying the same level of checks to every transaction.
He explained that facial verification is automatically triggered when high-risk activities are detected, such as high-value transfers, transactions from unfamiliar locations or unusual transaction patterns.
“Your face is the final lock on risky transactions, invisible when things are normal, immovable when they are not,” Adekunle said.
The company also showcased security features including Emergency Lock, which allows customers to freeze their accounts immediately if a phone is lost or stolen; Night Guard, which requires facial verification for unusual late-night transactions; Large Transaction Shield, which enables customers to set personalised transaction limits; and Anti-Scam Shield, which uses machine learning to identify and stop suspicious transfers before funds leave the network.
Adekunle said OPay also operates a zero scheduled downtime model, allowing system upgrades to be deployed without interrupting customer transactions.
“The goal is simple: We engineer for your safety, your reliability, and your peace of mind,” he said.
OPay said the continued growth of Nigeria’s digital economy depends on maintaining public confidence in digital financial services, noting that investments in intelligent fraud prevention technologies are critical to sustaining financial inclusion and supporting the country’s transition to a cashless economy.
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