By 
By Osasome, C.O
NGX pushes for local listings as OPay and PalmPay explore foreign IPOs, raising questions about local investor participation, capital retention and who should benefit from Nigeria’s booming digital payments economy
The prospect of major fintech companies OPay and PalmPay pursuing initial public offerings (IPOs) outside Nigeria has reignited a broader debate over how the country can ensure that domestic investors participate in the wealth created by its rapidly expanding digital economy.
RELATED: OPay targets $4bn US IPO as Nigerian fintech giant courts Wall Street banks
At the centre of the debate is a fundamental question: Should fintech companies that derive significant revenues from millions of Nigerian consumers be required or encouraged to offer Nigerian investors an opportunity to own a stake in their businesses when they eventually go public?
The issue has gained prominence following engagements between the leadership of the Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX Group) and the Presidency, with NGX Group CEO Temi Popoola advocating policy and legal measures that could encourage major companies with substantial Nigerian operations to pursue dual listings.
The proposal comes as OPay reportedly considers a potential listing in the United States, while PalmPay is exploring options in Asian markets.
NGX: Nigerians Should Share in Fintech Wealth
Popoola raised the issue during a meeting with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, arguing that Nigeria needs a framework that preserves the openness of its capital market while ensuring that domestic investors are not excluded from the value generated by companies whose businesses are heavily driven by the Nigerian market.
According to Popoola, companies that generate substantial profits from Nigeria should have a pathway to list locally even when they pursue international listings.
He said the objective should not be to restrict companies from accessing international capital, but to ensure that Nigerian investors can participate in the growth of businesses operating extensively within the country.
The NGX chief executive proposed that companies seeking overseas listings should also be encouraged, or potentially required, to undertake dual listings on the Nigerian Exchange.
His argument is that such a framework could allow companies to access deeper pools of international capital while simultaneously giving Nigerian investors access to their shares.
“While we encourage free and open markets, let’s make sure our locals can also benefit. As they list abroad, they should also list in our country,” Popoola said.
The proposal has opened a wider policy conversation around the relationship between Nigeria’s growing digital economy and its relatively shallow domestic capital market.
Why OPay and PalmPay Matter
The debate is particularly significant because of the scale of OPay and PalmPay’s businesses in Nigeria.
Both platforms have built large customer bases in the country, benefiting from the rapid growth of mobile payments, digital banking, agent banking and smartphone-based financial services.
Their growth illustrates the enormous commercial opportunity presented by Nigeria’s large population and expanding digital-finance ecosystem.
OPay, which has received backing from major international investors including SoftBank Group, has reportedly engaged global investment banks including Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase in preparation for a potential IPO that could value the company at up to about $4 billion, with the United States reportedly among the markets being considered.
PalmPay, backed by investors including Taiwanese semiconductor giant MediaTek, has also reportedly explored an IPO in an Asian market, including Hong Kong, as it seeks additional capital to expand its operations across emerging markets.
For Nigerian capital-market advocates, the potential listings represent more than corporate fundraising exercises.
They are also a test of whether Nigeria can capture a greater share of the financial value generated by companies that have achieved scale largely through the domestic market.
The Local Value-Creation Argument
Supporters of local listings argue that millions of Nigerians have played a critical role in creating the scale that makes these fintech companies attractive to international investors.
Everyday users generate transaction volumes, merchant activity, deposits, payments and other forms of commercial activity that underpin the platforms’ growth.
From this perspective, allowing Nigerians to buy shares when these companies go public would provide a mechanism for the domestic market to participate in the wealth created by the country’s digital transformation.
One commentator on X argued that Nigerian users should not be excluded from the investment opportunity simply because international capital markets offer fintech companies deeper pools of funding.
Another commentator, Okolo Michael, described the prospect of overseas listings as concerning, arguing that the companies generate significant revenue from Nigerian consumers.
The argument extends beyond OPay and PalmPay.
Supporters of stronger domestic listings point to companies such as Jumia, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and IHS, a major telecommunications infrastructure company with extensive African operations that previously had a listing on the Nigerian Exchange before its New York Stock Exchange listing.
The concern is that a growing number of successful African technology companies could build their businesses in local markets but ultimately create their most significant shareholder wealth in foreign capital markets.
Dual Listing as a Possible Compromise
A dual-listing framework could offer a middle ground between international capital access and domestic participation.
Under such an approach, a company could maintain a primary or major international listing while also listing its shares on the Nigerian Exchange.
Such a model could potentially:
- Give Nigerian investors access to high-growth technology companies;
- Increase the depth and diversity of the Nigerian capital market;
- Attract more technology companies to the local exchange;
- Improve domestic participation in wealth creation;
- Create more investment opportunities for retail investors; and
- Strengthen the connection between Nigeria’s digital economy and its capital markets.
For policymakers, however, the challenge would be designing rules that encourage local participation without making Nigeria’s market less attractive to companies and international investors.
The Other Side: Who Funded the Fintech Boom?
Not everyone agrees that OPay, PalmPay and other foreign-backed fintechs have an obligation to list in Nigeria simply because they generate significant revenue from Nigerian consumers.
Wale Adeyemo offered a contrasting perspective, arguing that the location of an IPO is often influenced by where the company’s early and growth-stage capital came from.
He questioned the argument that Nigerian investors should automatically claim access to IPOs of companies that were largely financed by foreign investors during their most difficult and risky stages of development.
His argument is that international investors accepted the early risks when many Nigerian fintechs were unproven businesses, while domestic investors generally had limited appetite or capacity to provide comparable venture capital.
“Opay, PalmPay, Flutterwave, MoniePoint are all seeded and hyper-scaled with foreign capital but they should list on NGX because they make money here?”
Adeyemo argued that Nigeria’s deeper challenge may therefore be the weakness of its domestic venture-capital ecosystem rather than simply the destination of fintech IPOs.
He maintained that Nigerian investors need to become more proactive in supporting the next generation of technology companies at the pre-seed, seed and growth stages, rather than waiting until those businesses become successful enough to pursue public listings.
Nigeria’s Venture Capital Gap
The counterargument exposes an important structural weakness in Nigeria’s technology ecosystem.
Local capital has historically played a smaller role in financing high-risk technology ventures than foreign capital. Nigerian startups frequently depend on international venture capital, foreign private equity, development finance and offshore investors to fund their early growth.
Local venture-capital firms themselves can also depend heavily on foreign limited partners.
This creates a funding cycle in which international investors assume significant early-stage risk, help companies scale and ultimately become major beneficiaries when those companies achieve large valuations.
By the time a fintech reaches the IPO stage, the argument goes, simply demanding a Nigerian listing does not necessarily address the deeper question of why domestic capital was not sufficiently available when the company needed it most.
Beyond OPay and PalmPay
The debate therefore extends well beyond the immediate IPO plans of OPay and PalmPay.
It raises fundamental questions about the architecture of Nigeria’s digital economy:
Who finances innovation? Who owns successful technology companies? Where are they listed? Where are the profits ultimately captured? And how much of the wealth created by Nigeria’s digital transformation remains within the country?
These questions are becoming increasingly important as Nigerian fintechs mature from startups into large financial-technology businesses capable of attracting multi-billion-dollar valuations.
The same debate could eventually emerge around other technology companies in payments, digital banking, telecommunications infrastructure, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, data centres and other strategic segments of the digital economy.
Policy Options: Local Ownership Without Closing the Market
The emerging debate suggests several possible policy directions.
Encouraging Local Listings
Government could create incentives for mature technology companies generating substantial Nigerian revenues to list on the Nigerian Exchange alongside any international listing.
Rather than imposing blanket requirements, incentives could include simplified listing processes, reduced costs or other market-development measures.
Expanding Retail Investor Access
The capital market could also explore ways to make technology-company investments more accessible to ordinary Nigerians, including appropriate frameworks for fractional ownership where legally and operationally feasible.
Strengthening Venture-Capital Participation
Perhaps more fundamentally, Nigeria needs deeper domestic pools of risk capital capable of funding technology businesses from their earliest stages.
This could involve greater institutional investment in venture capital, stronger pension-fund participation within appropriate regulatory limits, deeper angel-investor networks and improved incentives for domestic technology investment.
Developing a Stronger Technology Capital Market
Nigeria’s ambition to build a $1 trillion economy will require stronger links between its technology sector and domestic capital markets.
A deeper pipeline of listed technology companies could provide Nigerian investors with opportunities to participate in sectors driving economic growth while giving businesses access to long-term domestic capital.
The Bigger Question: Can Nigeria Capture More Digital-Economy Value?
The OPay and PalmPay IPO debate ultimately goes beyond stock-market listings.
It is about whether Nigeria can evolve from being primarily a large consumer market for global technology capital into a market that also captures, owns and reinvests a greater share of the value generated by its digital economy.
The NGX’s position is that domestic investors should not be shut out of the wealth created by companies that achieve scale in Nigeria.
The opposing argument is that ownership must reflect risk and capital contribution, and that Nigerian investors cannot reasonably expect to participate only when companies have become successful while avoiding the risks associated with early-stage investment.
Both arguments expose important realities.
Nigeria needs to remain open to international capital. At the same time, it needs to build the domestic financial architecture required to ensure that successful Nigerian businesses can create local ownership, local investment opportunities and long-term domestic wealth.
The OPay and PalmPay debate could therefore become an important catalyst for a much broader conversation about the future of Nigeria’s fintech sector, capital markets and digital-economy wealth creation.
The question is no longer simply where the next Nigerian fintech will list.
It is whether Nigeria can build a financial ecosystem in which the capital that helps build its digital economy—and the citizens whose economic activity helps create its value—can participate meaningfully in the wealth that follows.
