Two firms, TeamApt Limited and Moniepoint Microfinance Bank Limited have instituted a lawsuit before the Federal High Court in Lagos accusing OPay Digital Services Limited and its affiliate, SOTI Investments Limited, of orchestrating a coordinated scheme to poach their key field personnel, compromise confidential banking data, and gain an unfair advantage in Nigeria’s highly competitive digital payments sector.
The suit, marked FHC/L/332/2025, details allegations of predatory recruitment, regulatory breaches, and misuse of proprietary information.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to declare the defendants’ conduct a violation of banking ethics and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) standards.
They are seeking far-reaching injunctive orders restraining OPay and SOTI Investments from contacting, recruiting, or engaging any of their Business Relationship Managers (BRMs) or aggregators in any form.
The plaintiffs are also asking the court to stop the defendants from deploying new POS terminals through any BRMs allegedly recruited from their organisations or using operational information derived from confidential business processes.
In addition, the plaintiffs want the court to bar the defendants from obtaining or activating new POS Terminal IDs through banks such as Zenith Bank Plc and United Bank for Africa Plc, which they fear could be used to deploy POS machines to merchants originally onboarded by them.
TeamApt and Moniepoint further request that the court compel the defendants to cease all interference with their internal operations and halt any use of trade secrets or proprietary information allegedly obtained through poached employees.
They are claiming N100 million in damages for reputational injury, operational disruption, loss of competitive advantage, and erosion of customer trust, alongside the cost of litigation.
OPay and SOTI Investments have not publicly responded to the allegations.
The matter is expected to proceed to hearing, during which the plaintiffs intend to tender correspondence, chat records, internal memos, and regulatory documents as evidence.
In a witness statement filed in court, Sanni Oluwatobi Ezekiel, Senior Vice President (Distribution Network Sales) for the plaintiffs, alleged that OPay and its affiliate began a targeted recruitment drive in September 2024 to lure the plaintiffs’ BRMs—employees who occupy critical roles in agency banking, including onboarding merchants, managing thousands of POS terminals, and accessing privileged backend systems, customer data, and confidentiality protocols.
Ezekiel alleged that OPay enticed BRMs with higher commissions and generous financial incentives, fully aware that the individuals being targeted had access to sensitive operational information.
He cited an attempted recruitment of a BRM, Osifeso Victoria Oluwafunmilayo, who rejected the offer but whose experience he said reflected an ongoing pattern.
He also described the case of another BRM, Fidelis Geoffrey Ogbonna, who allegedly accepted OPay’s offer and began working for the defendants while still engaged by Moniepoint.
Ogbonna reportedly managed more than 1,000 POS terminals and had access to confidential merchant and agent data, which the plaintiffs now believe has been transferred to OPay.
According to the plaintiffs, an internal audit conducted in June 2025 revealed widespread redundancy of their POS terminals, which they attribute to the movement of BRMs to OPay along with trade secrets, business strategies, and proprietary materials.
They allege that OPay has since replicated Moniepoint’s sales and distribution framework, including specialised features such as POS terminal insurance and terminal write-off options, which were developed internally and protected through confidentiality protocols.
The plaintiffs also claim that the defendants encouraged BRMs to create proxy profiles to conceal their involvement while secretly diverting merchants and agents to OPay’s platform.
These actions, they argue, contravene several CBN regulations, including the 2019 Consumer Protection Regulations and the Guidelines for Agent Banking.
Ezekiel further warned that because OPay’s ownership includes foreign nationals who maintain data servers outside Nigeria, confidential customer data allegedly obtained through these practices may be transmitted abroad, exposing customers and the Nigerian financial system to serious security risks.
He added that the plaintiffs face potential litigation from customers should any confidential information be compromised.
Describing the defendants’ conduct as unethical, unfair, and capable of destabilising licensed financial institutions, the plaintiffs insist that urgent judicial intervention is necessary to prevent further loss of trained staff, erosion of their business model, diversion of customer relationships, and continued compromise of sensitive data.
Leave a Reply