Optasia, an AI-powered financial infrastructure platform serving underbanked customers in emerging markets, notes that FirstRand Limited has increased its shareholding in Optasia to 26.1% through the acquisition of an additional 6% stake.

FirstRand acquired 74,103,711 ordinary shares in Optasia at ZAR20.00 on 25 March 2026 from an entity owned by Bassim Haidar, founder and non-executive director of Optasia. This follows FirstRand’s initial strategic investment in Optasia in October 2025, where it acquired 20.1% of Optasia ahead of its IPO.

Subsequent to the transaction, Bassim Haidar now holds an aggregate, indirect shareholding of 1.5% of the total issued shares in Optasia, and remains on the Board of the Company, continuing to actively support the company’s strategic direction.

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FirstRand Buys Stake In FinTech Giant Optasia

BY STAFF WRITER2025-10-27UPDATED:2025-10-29NO COMMENTS3 MINS READ

JSE-listed financial services group FirstRand announced an agreement to acquire 20.1% of Optasia, one of the world’s largest AI-powered fintech platforms providing financial access to people across emerging markets.

The group is acquiring this strategic investment concurrent with Optasia’s IPO which is in progress.

FirstRand believes that this investment in Optasia represents an exciting opportunity to leverage a proven fintech platform that has a successful track record of solving the lending needs of underbanked or unbanked consumers, practitioners and micro enterprises which have had difficulty accessing traditional credit products.

Optasia’s ability to pre-score customers, process micro loans at scale and use mobile data sales as a credit collection mechanism is highly innovative and is clearly meeting the needs of millions of customers in 38 countries across Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Ultimately Optasia offers FirstRand access to these new markets and new customers, which would be challenging to acquire organically and provides the group with geographic expansion opportunities in key emerging markets.

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GUGU LOURIE: Optasia’s IPO a landmark for financial inclusion in Africa

It’s not often a columnist gets to say, “I told you so”, while watching predictions unfold with such compelling force. Back in February 2022, I argued in this very space that fintech was becoming the new airtime, the lifeblood for telecom giants like MTN and Vodacom.

October 12, 2025 at 08:32 am