- A Nigerian business owner has accused OPay’s “potential risk” alerts of negatively affecting her business, claiming customers are hesitant to complete transactions after receiving the warnings.
- She said the alerts have appeared on transfers as low as ₦2,500 and called on the fintech company to review its system.
- The complaint has sparked conversations online about fraud prevention measures, with many users debating whether such alerts strike the right balance between protecting customers and avoiding unnecessary disruption to legitimate businesses.
A Nigerian business owner has publicly criticised OPay over its “potential risk” alerts, claiming the warnings are affecting her business by discouraging customers from completing payments to her account.
The entrepreneur, identified on Facebook as Grace Anuoluwapo Lois, shared her concerns in a lengthy post, questioning what triggers the alerts, especially for relatively small transactions.
According to Grace, she began noticing the issue whenever several customers attempted to transfer money to her OPay account within a short period.
She said some customers informed her that they received a “potential risk” warning before completing their transfers, while she believes others may have abandoned the transaction without notifying her.
“I want to know what exactly triggers your potential risk alert when someone is about to transfer to an account, especially when the amount isn’t that huge (below ₦10,000 even).
“Whenever I have a lot of people sending money to my account in a short period of time, I keep getting complaints from some of them that they want to transfer but got a warning from OPay.”
Grace questioned why even transactions below ₦10,000 would trigger the warning, arguing that such alerts could wrongly portray legitimate business owners as suspicious.
She expressed concern that the recurring notifications may be costing her sales without her knowledge.
“Now, I’m sure not everyone who encountered this ended up informing me, some must have just chicken out and not continued with the transaction. That means my business is loosing and I’m not even aware.
“So please, you guys need to explain why this is like this because I’m about to let go of your bank totally for such transactions. I know you are trying to protect your customers who are sending money, but why do it at the expense of the business owner at the receiving end too??
“Sc*m alerts and potential risk alerts is such a sensitive thing to put out when you are not sure the person is a scam.
“Please work on your system for the sake of people whose business might be suffering from this… as for me, I think I’m done with you guys until I’m very sure this won’t happen again.”
In a follow-up post, Grace revealed that her sister also encountered the same warning while trying to transfer just ₦2,500 to her account.
She added that one of her students experienced a similar issue while attempting to pay for a class, forcing her to encourage the student to complete the payment using PalmPay instead.
“This Afternoon, my sister wanted to send #2,500 to me and this was the notification she got… just 2500 ooo.
“One of my student who registered for my class this morning also experienced the same thing and she almost chickened out, but told me and I had to just encourage her to proceed with the payment with PalmPay.
“I see no reason why a transaction less than 50k should be triggering your potential risk alert. It doesn’t make any sense.”
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