Marketing Chief at OPay Digital Services Limited, Adekunle Adeyemi, refutes claims suggesting the existence of OPay app accounts or wallets being generated without customer consent.
He said:
“This prompted us to immediately commence an investigation to determine the authenticity of these claims as all OPay wallets are adequately registered in line with regulatory requirements, based on our investigation, we discovered that these accounts were indeed opened by the owners at different times, but generally between 2019/2020.
”When contacted by our team, some of the individuals have, however, claimed not to remember whether/when they opened the account.”
This is in response to customer concerns. OPay Digital Services Limited has taken swift action to address allegations of unauthorized account creation on their app. Following reports received via social media, a thorough investigation was conducted, focusing on at least four of the complaints.
Adeyemi noted that
“At least four of the complaints received via social media have been checked, and all four of them have been contacted to resolve the concerns raised.
“It is imperative to note that some of these accounts have had no balance in them since they were opened. As a law abiding, strictly regulated entity, we have unequivocally inquired of these individuals if they would like to retain the accounts, and we obliged based on their responses.
“I would like to say that the OPay wallet can only be opened through the CBN-established registration process which requires the input of an OTP authentication (one-time password) and ID authentication from the user’s phone to proceed. It is also important to note that OPay has never created (nor does it operate) any account on behalf of any individual.
“On a final note, we would like to encourage any individual with similar concerns to contact us via any of our official channels, and the issues will be resolved promptly. As a brand, we place utmost priority on our customers’ needs and pride ourselves as a regulatory-compliant organization,” he added.
On Thursday, the federal government initiated an investigation into OPay for alleged data breaches, potentially resulting in the company forfeiting two percent of its annual gross revenue to the government. Numerous complaints from Nigerians regarding violations of data subjects’ rights prompted this action.
The Nigeria Data Protection Commission has also launched inquiries into the data processing practices of the implicated data controllers.
According to The Guardian, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) has raised concerns about the company’s operations in Nigeria, as stated by CEO Babatunde Irukera in a recent post.
“OPAY has been asked to come in and explain what has been a few days of anomalies.”
