Browsing: Opera

Opera's Mombasa servers saving Kenya users billions of Shillings

Returning from a global legal onslaught, Chinese owned Opera has moved on to solidify its hold of Africa with the installation of new servers in Mombasa which it says makes browsing four times faster.

The browser with more than 350 million monthly active users has faced legal tackles mainly from US and Europe on how it handles app-based loans. Google play also announced that it will take measures against the company based on how it runs Okash, an online money lending app.

Opera has announced the successful installation of its new local servers in Mombasa, Kenya, through iColo.io MBA1 data center facility which has helped increase the browsing speed significantly. The company said its new server was saving a total of 4400 hours of time waiting for webpages to load.

These servers significantly increase browsing speed up to four times faster than before, meaning that millions of Kenyans who …

Legal tussles out to push Opera's African hold off the rail

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 …

OPay raises $120 million for its African expansion in mobile payment services

OPay, one of the fastest scaling growth companies in Africa, has announced that it raised $120 million of series B funding, less than 6 months after it announced its last funding round of $50 million in June.

The company, which was incubated by Norwegian based, global consumer Internet company Opera, is already Nigeria’s leading mobile wallet and motorbike ridesharing provider, and is rapidly expanding.

Series B investors included Meituan-Dianping, DragonBall Capital (The Investment fund backed by Meituan-Dianping), GaoRong Capital, Source Code Capital, SoftBank Ventures Asia, Bertelsmann Asia Investments (BAI), Redpoint China, IDG Capital, Sequoia Capital China and GSR Ventures.

OPay is one of the fastest growing companies in Nigeria, providing consumers with a wide range of services including mobile payments and transfers, ridesharing and food delivery. The company plans to use the new capital to further accelerate its expansion across its multiple verticals, as well as entering new African markets.…