OPay has announced that it has temporarily shut down its ride-hailing services, ORide, OCar, and its logistics service OExpress.
The company in a statement on Thursday stated the harsh business conditions, the pandemic and government ban on ride-hailing platforms as reasons it was shutting down.
The company noted that despite all efforts it undertook in mitigating the adverse impact of the COVID-19, the OPay was still impacted.
It also added that it was restructuring its business model.
The statement read, “Globally, ride-sharing businesses have been heavily impacted by the pandemic.
“But several months ago, foreseeing this issue, OPay had already taken pre-emptive steps to restructure our business focus away from rides.
“It is worthy to note that this final restructuring has minimal impact on OPay as a whole.”
It explained that there was increased demand for its offline mobile money agency, and online digital payment platform during the first four months of the year.
The firm said, “From January to April 2020, for example, we witnessed a 44 per cent growth of offline and online transaction value even in the midst of the pandemic and lockdown.
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“This is a testament to the high demand for flexible and easy financial services by Nigerians.”
It promised to still operate in the e-commerce space, noting that its financial platform would transform Nigeria’s future, in the era of technological development.
The Lagos State Government had on February 1 commenced enforcement of the extant Transport Sector Reform Law 2018 which banned operations of motorcycles in some areas. This affected OPay’s ride-hailing platform businesses.
