WorldStage– Nigeria’s Africa-focused fintech giant, PalmPay, is reportedly preparing for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, signaling a major exit strategy for its Asian backers.
According to a Bloomberg report, the digital payment platform aims to raise up to $200 million, with the fresh funding round expected to push its valuation past the $1 billion unicorn threshold.
The move follows a similar public listing trajectory mapped out by its fierce rival, OPay, which recently hired global Wall Street banks to lead a massive $4 billion IPO in the United States.
Both platforms have achieved dominance by capturing Nigeria’s massive unbanked and underbanked population, leveraging localized agent banking networks and point-of-sale (PoS) services.
PalmPay alone boasts over 35 million registered users and reached profitability in 2025.
However, the foreign listings of Nigeria’s primary digital payment infrastructures have sparked sharp national debates regarding capital flight and economic sovereignty.
Critics and financial analysts note that while Nigerian consumers and local agents aggressively built, tested, and scaled these platforms into multi-billion-dollar entities, the ultimate financial windfall is being exported overseas.
The corporate architecture of these fintechs underpins this structure.
PalmPay was launched in 2019 using seed capital from Chinese phone maker Transsion Holdings, alongside MediaTek and NetEase, while OPay was incubated by Norway-founded, Chinese-owned Opera.
In response to growing domestic concerns, Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Group CEO Temi Popoola reportedly raised the matter directly with the Nigerian Presidency.
Popoola called for government interventions and the development of dual-listing frameworks.
Such structures would mandate or incentivize foreign-owned tech giants to list locally, ensuring everyday Nigerian users can directly buy equity and financially benefit from the digital transformation they created.
