OPay Takes PoS Operator’s N83,140 for Loan He Repaid 1 Year Ago

 

The unauthorised deduction of N83,140 from the OPay account of Abdullahi Ayuba, a Lagos-based Point of Sale (PoS) operator, on June 12 came as a shock to him.

Ayuba told revealed that OPay deducted the money just after a customer credited his account with some money. When he reached out to the fintech company to know why the money was withdrawn without his consent, he was directed to Fairmoney Microfinance Bank.

This surprised the PoS operator all the more because he experienced a transaction issue involving both OPay and Fairmoney back in 2024, and the amount in question was exactly N83,140.

Ayuba narrated how he transferred the sum of N83,140 from his OPay to his Fairmoney account on June 24 but later found that the transaction, which he initially thought was successful, was reversed to OPay the following day.

OPay blamed it on a system glitch and then began to make indiscriminate deductions from Ayuba’s account.

According to Ayuba, Fairmoney froze his bank account over this transaction that was reversed and told him to re-transfer the N83,140 manually for the restriction to be lifted.

“I transferred the money to Fairmoney on July 5 through a Stanbic IBTC account that was sent to me, and my account was unfrozen a few days later, but OPay continued debiting my account even though I had refunded the money,” he explained.

“I was shuttling between their offices for almost two months, and they both kept directing me to each other back and forth, and nothing was done about it until FIJ came to my rescue in 2024.”

Checks revealed that the Stanbic IBTC account provided to Ayuba was registered under the name “MYCREDIT INVESTMENT LIMITED”, the parent company of Fairmoney.

“Unfortunately, a year later, OPay came back to debit all the N83,140 from my account immediately after a customer credited me with N200,000,” Ayuba added.

FIJ understands that Ayuba has been visiting OPay’s office since the recent deduction occurred, but there has been no resolution or refund.

“OPay has been tossing me back and forth. They said I should go and meet Fairmoney. The same thing they told me when last year’s incident happened,” Ayuba said.

On the other hand, OPay claimed “the adjustment debit was carried out due to a transaction that was carried out on June 24, 2024, 00:29:06, owing to a network glitch from Fairmoney MFB”.