They are called “nano-loans” in the industry prospectuses, but to the 40 million Nigerians who depend on them, airtime advances are simply a way to keep a phone line alive when the balance hits zero. Borrow 100 naira worth of airtime, repay a few days later, repeat. The product is small. The market is anything but.
Over the past three months, that market has become the battlefield for a contest that pits a publicly listed South African fintech against Nigerian regulators, local industry associations, and the political authority of the presidency itself. At stake is control over an airtime credit lending market estimated at between N400 billion and N3 trillion annually — the wide range itself a reflection of how little consensus exists about who actually owns the sector’s data.
The incumbent
Optasia, the Dubai-based, Johannesburg-listed fintech formerly known as Channel VAS, has spent 12 years powering MTN Nigeria’s XtraTime airtime lending product. The arrangement is straightforward: Optasia provides the credit-scoring technology, facilitates the advances, and takes roughly 25 per cent of revenue generated. Between 2019 and 2023 alone, MTN reportedly earned an estimated ₦5.6 trillion from airtime and data lending, meaning Optasia’s share ran into billions of naira annually.
The company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in November 2025, raising R6.5 billion in an offering priced at the top of its range, implying a market capitalisation of R23.5 billion. FirstRand, the South African banking group, took a 20.1 per cent stake. Optasia today processes more than 30 million loan transactions daily across 38 countries, serving over 120 million users. The JSE described it as the largest fintech IPO on the exchange since 2018.
In Nigeria, however, the company’s operational footprint is legally minimalist. Critics allege that Optasia has maintained no administrative infrastructure in the country, employs no Nigerian staff, and does not share credit data with Nigerian bureaus or other financial technology firms, creating what one FCCPC official termed “an information asymmetry that has stifled local competition”.
Optasia did not respond to multiple inquiries for this article. The company has, however, filed an interim injunction before a Federal High Court seeking to restrain the FCCPC from implementing deregulation measures.
The regulator’s gambit
The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) introduced the Digital, Electronic, Online or Non-Traditional Consumer Lending Regulations (DEON) in July 2025. The framework required digital lenders to register, comply with consumer protection standards, and submit to oversight. More controversially, it mandated that no telecom company could maintain a single exclusive foreign partner for digital lending — at least one Nigerian-owned company must be part of every partnership.
The logic was not subtle. For a market generating billions in annual revenue from Nigerian consumers using Nigerian networks, the FCCPC argued, a share of the value should remain in the country. The alternative, as one FCCPC source put it during a briefing to the presidency, was “capital flight to South Africa as hitherto perpetrated by Optasia”.
In April 2026, the FCCPC moved to enforce the regulations. The immediate consequence was a six-week suspension of airtime credit services by MTN Nigeria, Airtel Nigeria, Globacom and 9mobile. Approximately 40 million Nigerians lost access to products like XtraTime and Borrow Me Credit overnight. A market estimated at N300 billion to N400 billion annually froze.
On 15 April 2026, Justice Ambrose Lewis-Allagoa of the Federal High Court in Lagos granted four interim injunctions in Suit No. FHC/L/CS/760/2026, restraining the FCCPC from enforcing or implementing the DEON Regulations against members of the Wireless Application Service Providers Association of Nigeria (WASPAN). The court also barred the FCCPC from interfering with WASPAN members’ services, imposing sanctions, or issuing directives under the framework.
WASPAN, whose membership comprises Nigerian-registered value-added service providers holding valid Nigerian Communications Commission licences, moved quickly to distance itself from suggestions that the litigation was a proxy for Optasia’s commercial interests. “The characterisation of this litigation as an attempt by any single foreign entity to obstruct market reform is false,” the association stated. “The suit was filed to protect the rights of those members and the tens of millions of Nigerian consumers who depend on their services”.
The FCCPC applied to have the injunction discharged on 28 April. The court refused. The order remains in full force.
On 6 June 2026, local newspaper Vanguard reported that President Bola Tinubu had directed the FCCPC to “break the 12-year monopoly of South African firm Optasia on airtime credit lending and data advance services” in Nigeria. The directive, according to sources within the commission, followed a high-level briefing in which the FCCPC argued that deregulating the sector would promote competition, support the Nigeria First Technology Policy, create employment, and discourage capital flight.
The presidency accepted the commission’s “economic-sense argument”, according to an FCCPC official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The official added that nine Nigerian fintech firms had been identified to enter the market: Technotrends Platforms Nigeria, Fonyou Technologies Nigeria, MRS Innovation Nigeria, ERL Telecoms Service, Total Tim Nigeria, Rane Interactive Medien CLS, Mode NG Applications, Cloud Interactive Associate, and Coverage Broadland.
The FCCPC, however, subsequently issued a statement denying that it had been involved in any submission of names to the presidency, adding that enforcement of the DEON Regulations remained suspended pending the determination of the court case, which has been fixed for further hearing on 20 July 2026.
The dispute exposes a deeper structural ambiguity. The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has long regulated airtime advances as a telecom value‑added service under the Nigerian Communications Act 2003. The FCCPC, by contrast, classifies the same product as a consumer lending arrangement subject to the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2018. Both regulators claim authority. Neither has yielded.
The practical consequence is regulatory paralysis. As the Legal practitioner and tech policy analyst Ogunbiyi Ayodeji noted in a recent commentary, the DEON Regulations came into effect in July 2025 but were suspended by the FCCPC in May 2026 after a court ruling. “Despite this suspension, the FCCPC on 22 April 2026 approved five companies to operate as licensed airtime credit providers under the same DEON framework, and on 4 June 2026, it added four more — even while the court order and the commission’s own administrative suspension remained in force,” Ogunbiyi wrote.
WASPAN has since filed committal proceedings against the FCCPC’s Executive Vice Chairman for alleged contempt. The association’s chairman for regulatory and partnership, Osa Umweni, put the matter bluntly: “A court order is not a communications instrument to be acknowledged when convenient and disregarded when inconvenient. It is a binding judicial directive, and the commission’s officers are personally accountable for its observance”.
The view from Optasia’s books
Optasia’s 2025 consolidated financial statements, filed after its JSE listing, offer a partial glimpse of why Nigeria matters less to the company’s African strategy than might be assumed. Two data points are instructive.
First, XTRA MFS Ghana, a 70 per cent‑owned subsidiary, grew revenue from $7.4 million to $48.5 million in a single year. Net profit reached $9.95 million from less than $1 million previously. The subsidiary processed over $1 billion in nano‑loans. The driver was macroeconomic stabilisation: inflation in Ghana fell from 23.5 per cent to 5.4 per cent, and the cedi strengthened approximately 40 per cent against the dollar.
Second, Benin emerged as Optasia’s single largest country trade receivable balance across the entire African portfolio, at $8.17 million, up roughly fourfold from $1.99 million in 2024. The company incorporated a second Benin entity — Xtra Cash Benin S.A. — alongside the existing Nairtime Benin SARL, signalling a deliberate build‑out in a CFA franc market whose currency peg to the euro confers structural stability.
Nigeria’s trade receivable balance stood at $7.73 million, roughly double the prior year but comparable to Ghana’s and only marginally ahead of Benin’s — a country of 14 million people. The naira stabilised in the ₦1,400 per dollar range in 2025, against a pre‑2024 average below ₦1,000. Inflation closed the year at 15.5 per cent. Household financial stress remained elevated.
Optasia charged $65.21 million in expected credit loss provisions on financial guarantee contracts in 2025 against settlements of $55.83 million. The company does not break this down by country. Given Nigeria’s macro conditions and operational history, it almost certainly accounts for a disproportionate share.
One implication is uncomfortable for Nigeria’s deregulation advocates. Optasia is not resisting because Nigeria is its most profitable market. It is resisting because Nigeria remains its most contested one — and because the principles at stake, including the enforceability of contracts and the stability of regulatory frameworks, have implications far beyond airtime advances.
For the 40 million Nigerians who rely on airtime credit to stay connected, the regulatory battle has already inflicted real cost: weeks of suspended services, disrupted livelihoods, and no clarity on when the next shutdown might occur.
The FCCPC says it is protecting consumers. WASPAN says it is protecting members’ legal rights. The presidency says it is protecting national economic sovereignty. Optasia says very little publicly, preferring the language of court filings.
What none of the parties appears to have asked is whether the airtime credit market, after three months of legal warfare and regulatory whiplash, still functions as the low‑friction financial tool that tens of millions of low‑income Nigerians actually need. The answer, for now, is that it does so intermittently — which, in the world of nano‑loans, is not nearly good enough.