The online bank Opay or Palmpay has recently become the consistent payment solution for day-to-day transactions in Nigeria since the scarcity of naira at ATMs and in traditional banking halls.
It appears that many Nigerians including celebrities have overcome the fear of entrusting their hard earned money to an online banking system without brick and mortar.
New tech always comes with disruptive changes. Although, some Opay users have took to social media to say the online bank has 25 state branches including Lagos. Considering, the new naira scarcity and bank apps responding poorly, many are now opening account with Opay.
To make account opening process easy, the fintech startup uses the customer’s mobile phone number to generate the online bank account and doesn’t require customer’s Bank Verification Number—BVN.
So far, with huge downloads of the app, Opay hits a high number threshold compared to last year.
“I have done more than six transfers to OPay accounts today. Even my employees refused taking pay in their normal accounts that I have saved as ‘beneficiaries’ , they all insisted on Opay, claiming transactions there have been seamless, without a single delay in crediting,” employer comments on Opay current trend on Twitter.
From a new user on Twitter, “I couldn’t help but notice that their account numbers their were the last ten digits of their cell phone numbers. Lmao! That’s actually an upgrade for people like me that have never tried memorizing my account number. Just remove the first 0 in their phone digits.”
Despite how seamless opening accounts may be and how consistent day-to-day transactions are, other users and non-users as well advise that people should not use the online account as their investment or savings account to avoid stories that touch—to avoid losing huge money to fraud.
Opay is one among a good number of online banks presently in the country.
Just before I stop typing, it is just too good to be true, according to users the online bank doesn’t charge for transactions at least for now.
By Elijah Christopher