OPay and PalmPay: Two Chinese-Backed Investments Battle it Out in Africa’s Rapidly Growing Mobile Payment Market

Nairobi-based Malawian tech entrepreneur Wiza Jalakasi offers his take on the Opay vs. PalPay duel that is emerging. Follow Wiza on Twitter at @wizaj and find out more about his portfolio on his personal website at wiza.jalaka.si.

For those of you old enough to remember the early days of the Internet, you may also recall using a Norwegian web browser called Opera. Unable to compete against Google, Firefox and Microsoft, Opera fell on hard times and sold most of its assets to a Chinese-led consortium for $600 million.

Now, five years later, Opera is back, but you probably wouldn’t know it if you don’t live in Africa where the company enjoys a thriving search and browser business that’s now second only to Google.

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by Eric Olander

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