Stock exchange filing reveals how Nigeria’s airtime credit disruption is redirecting investment to other African markets

JSE-listed Optasia posted 50–60% revenue growth for the first half of 2026, driven by expansion outside Nigeria, even as the company’s oldest African market grapples with an unresolved regulatory dispute over airtime credit.

• Optasia reported 50–60% revenue growth in H1 2026, with adjusted EBITDA up 40–50%, driven by new deployments in West Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.

• Nigeria, the company’s oldest market, was flagged as a disruption risk with unrecovered transaction volumes.

• Foreign capital inflows into Nigeria’s telecom sector fell from $80.78 million to $7.24 million in Q1 2026, per NBS data.

• Industry leaders say the trajectory could reverse if regulatory certainty is restored ahead of a July 20 court ruling.

A trading update filed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange on 2 July shows Optasia, the AI-powered fintech that provides airtime and data credit infrastructure across African and Asian markets, posting revenue growth of between 50 and 60 per cent for the first half of 2026. Adjusted EBITDA grew by 40-50 per cent, with its share price rising more than 6 per cent on the day.

Optasia started in Nigeria in 2012, holds patents registered in the country, and built its business model on Nigerian telecom infrastructure over more than a decade.

Nigeria remained the company’s largest single market by revenue as recently as 2024, and the country continues to anchor its West African operations.

But the growth that drove the headline numbers came from elsewhere. The company launched three new deployments and expanded into two additional countries during the period, building out operations across West Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.

Nigeria was flagged in the filing as a disruption risk, with transaction volumes that had not recovered to pre-disruption levels.

The disruption stems from an enforcement action by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, which extended its DEON Consumer Lending Regulations to cover telecom airtime credit services.

The FCCPC introduced the regulations in response to documented consumer harm from predatory digital lending applications, a problem the industry acknowledges was real.

The dispute is over whether airtime credit, a telecom service already regulated by the NCC, falls within that framework. Industry stakeholders contend the FCCPC bypassed the mandatory Regulatory Impact Assessment required by the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council before intervening in a market estimated at N300-400 billion annually.

The filing illustrates a pattern that emerges when regulatory uncertainty hits a single market within a multi-country portfolio. Investment does not leave visibly; instead, it redirects to geographies with a more predictable regulatory framework.

The broader data tells a consistent story. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, foreign capital inflows into Nigeria’s telecom sector fell from $80.78 million to $7.24 million in Q1 2026.

ALTON chairman Gbenga Adebayo has disclosed that mobile operators invested N2.13 trillion in capital expenditure in 2025 and earmarked N1.86 trillion for 2026.

He warned in April that a market with unclear regulatory jurisdiction will struggle to attract long-term investment.

President Tinubu told the warned that Nigeria is targeting $20 billion in foreign direct investment. That ambition depends on whether the regulatory environment provides the certainty institutional investors require before committing multi-year capital.

Optasia CEO Salvador Anglada told the Financial Mail earlier this year that 80 to 85 per cent of Optasia’s growth over the next two to three years will come from Africa. At the company’s JSE listing in November, he told The Africa Report that choosing Johannesburg as its listing venue was a natural choice, reflecting the company’s identity as an Africa-centred business.

The filing suggests that continental commitment is being delivered, but Nigeria’s share of that commitment is being reshaped by the regulatory environment.

There are early signs that the situation may be stabilising. Airtime credit services were restored across all four major operators in late June. Anglada welcomed the resumption and described airtime credit as an essential service that helps consumers remain connected.

Optasia’s Nigerian subsidiary, Nairtime Nigeria, is locally incorporated and led by Nigerian national Uchenna Agbo, who has served as chief executive since the company’s founding. The company has publicly stated that it remains committed to the Nigerian market and to constructive engagement with regulators.

Whether that commitment translates into renewed investment deployment depends on what happens next. If the regulatory environment stabilises, if market-entry processes become transparent, and if the coordination framework between the FCCPC and the NCC is formalised, the conditions will be in place for Nigeria to recapture its position within Optasia’s continental strategy.

The Federal High Court judgment on 20 July could determine whether the trajectory reverses or whether the share of African fintech investment flowing through Lagos continues to thin as other markets absorb the growth.