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Browsing: Africa Fintech
In mid-January, US based financial whistleblower and research organization Hindenburg Research released a report titled’ The Phantom of the turn-around’ in which it questioned the operations of Opera, the Chinese owned browser whose popularity in Africa has remained high. What has followed is a series of class-action lawsuits by a dozen law firms in US and UK against the browser.
The research firm accused Opera of “developing predatory short-term loans in Africa and India, deploying deceptive ‘bait and switch’ tactics to lure in borrowers and charging egregious interest rates ranging from 365-876%.” This, the company says is going against Google policies of charging fair rates on short term loans.
According to financial firm Hindenburg Research, Opera has launched at least four payment apps under various developer accounts. There’s Okash and OPesa in Kenya, CashBean in India, and OPay in Nigeria.
It noted that Opera has scaled its “Fintech” segment from …