OPay is installed on 69 per cent of smartphones surveyed in Nigeria, making it the most widely present banking and fintech application in the country, according to the Nigeria Smartphone Study 2025 by Orange Group and KPMG.
The fintech platform recorded a substantial lead over other financial apps surveyed. PalmPay followed with 29 per cent, while Access Bank and Moniepoint recorded 16 per cent and 14 per cent respectively. UBA and GTBank each stood at 11 per cent, followed by FirstBank at 10 per cent, Zenith Bank at nine per cent, Kuda at eight per cent and PayPal at seven per cent.
The figures place OPay, PalmPay and Moniepoint among the most commonly installed financial applications on Nigerian smartphones. Brandspur Banking News Desk reports that the findings reflect the growing role of mobile applications in how Nigerians access and manage everyday financial services.
The study was based on responses from 13,251 people across 12 cities, including Lagos, Ibadan, Abuja, Kano, Port Harcourt, Benin City and Kaduna. It also recorded an increase in smartphone penetration, with 75 per cent of respondents owning smartphones in 2025, compared with 64 per cent in 2023.
The growing presence of fintech applications comes as Nigerians increasingly use their phones for routine financial transactions, including money transfers, bill payments and airtime purchases. This has brought fintech companies and conventional banks into closer competition within the same mobile ecosystem.
Traditional financial institutions are consequently operating alongside newer digital platforms on consumers’ smartphones, where access to digital services has become an increasingly important part of the banking experience.
However, OPay’s 69 per cent presence should not be interpreted as the company’s share of Nigeria’s banking customers or as 69 per cent of the country’s population using the platform. The figure refers specifically to the proportion of smartphones in the study’s sample on which the application was installed.
The result comes as smartphone adoption continues to expand, potentially giving financial service providers a larger mobile audience. As more Nigerians rely on smartphones as a gateway to financial services, the battle for customers is increasingly taking place through the applications installed on their devices.
