Optasia revenue rises 58% to $185,3m as microfinancing overtakes airtime credit
The JSE-listed fintech, chaired by former FNB chief Michael Jordaan, is pushing credit to lower-income borrowers across 38 countries and plans three new African markets by 2027.
Moneyweb reports that Optasia, the Dubai-based fintech group that listed on the JSE in 2025, lifted revenue 58% to $185,3 million in the half-year to June, as its microfinancing business overtook airtime credit as the group’s main earner.
Loans and income disbursed rose 46% to $3,5 billion over the same period. Adjusted free cash flow climbed 150% to $32,7 million, a cash conversion rate of 41,9%. Adjusted Ebitda came in at $77,9 million on a 42,0% margin, up 45%, and normalised net income rose 40% to $39,3 million. Basic and headline earnings per share were 2,79 US cents, up 50%.
The company’s credit impairment ratio sat at 1,3%, and net debt to annualised adjusted Ebitda was 0,20 times.
Microfinancing now carries the group
The shift in the revenue mix is the story underneath the headline number. Microfinancing, the service that lets banks lend to customers they would ordinarily turn away, grew 84% and now accounts for 72% of turnover. Airtime credit, once the group’s signature product, has been overtaken.
Three factors explain the change. More users are adopting digital wallets, which lifts the number of active accounts. Transaction sizes in microfinancing are larger than a purchase of airtime or data. And the margins on lending are better than the margins on selling prepaid airtime.
Optasia says it processes more than 30 million loan transactions a day for over 120 million users in 38 countries. Chief executive Salvador Anglada told Moneyweb that the group’s data and analytics are what allow it to reach borrowers other lenders cannot assess.
We are the ones that are able to understand the patterns, the behaviours, the unstructured data that exists in the market, and with this, we are able to understand the affordability of people in order to get a loan.
South African readers have a direct stake in how that model performs. The group is chaired by former FNB chief executive Michael Jordaan, and FNB holds a 26,1% stake, taken as the bank pushes deeper into lending and services for lower-income consumers. A credit book built on behavioural data rather than traditional credit records is precisely the frontier South African banks are competing on, and the impairment ratio in these results is the number that tells them whether it works.
Merchant lending moves into new markets
Optasia also opened a second front in the half-year. It launched merchant financing in Ghana, reaching about 56 000 vendors, and extended the product to Uganda after the end of June. Merchant financing gives a business a lump sum in return for a share of future sales, a structure aimed at small enterprises that cannot clear the requirements for a conventional bank loan.
Anglada described a substantial pipeline of markets for the product and said it would be rolled out across the group’s geographies. He also said Optasia expects to be ready to offer its credit products in Ethiopia, Mozambique and Kenya by 2027.
The group reported growth across its established markets, including Ghana, Pakistan, Indonesia and Congo-Brazzaville.
Prepaid electricity, paid for later
Optasia has completed its acquisition of Dubai-based Finergi, which owns technology that lets eligible customers take prepaid electricity when they need it and settle the cost afterwards.
Finergi chief executive Avi Lasarow set out the problem the product addresses. Prepaid electricity systems help utilities and governments manage the debt that builds up when customers do not pay, but they create a different difficulty for low-income households whose income arrives irregularly. Finergi advances the electricity, pays the utility in full, and charges the consumer a flat fee when they are next able to recharge.
Lasarow said the World Bank aims to extend electricity access to 300 million more people by 2030, and that Finergi operates in 53% of the bank’s priority markets.
That model speaks directly to South Africa’s own prepaid metering system, where millions of households buy electricity in small amounts and a stretch of unpaid days means no power at all. A flat fee charged at the next recharge is a different proposition from the interest on a loan, and it is the kind of structure that would be tested against local consumer credit rules before it travelled here.
What the market made of it
Optasia listed on the JSE in 2025 at R19 a share. By 12:46 on the day Moneyweb published, the price was R14.90. The gap between the operating numbers and the share price is the question the group’s next set of results will have to answer.
The three new markets named for 2027, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Kenya, are the next dated milestone on the record. Mozambique’s inclusion puts a second Southern African market on the group’s expansion map alongside its existing footprint.
