26,000 writers, paid.26,000 writers, paid.

The problem

A local writer files a story for Opera News. At the end of the month Opera owes them for it, in a country where sending money to one person is slow and sending it to thousands is harder still.

Opera's browser reached phones from Togo to Sweden before mobile internet was widespread. MiniPay brings that same idea to money. It is a non-custodial dollar wallet built on Celo inside the browser, where a phone number is all anyone needs to send or receive dollars. It's designed to make digital finance accessible, affordable and easy to use.

Opera News already paid a large network of writers in exactly those markets. That made it MiniPay's natural first use, an audience Opera could serve on its own. But MiniPay was built for one person paying another, not for paying thousands of people at once.

Why Mural

Opera needed to pay thousands of writers, hundreds at a time, in markets where paying even one person is slow and currency fluctuations are quite common. Doing that the usual way means stitching together a payout system, payment providers in each market and a compliance vendor to check every recipient, then keeping all of it in sync. Opera had no interest in maintaining a second system next to MiniPay.

So Opera built on Mural. Mural is the system underneath every payout. Before anyone is paid, Mural screens each recipient against sanctions lists (e.g., OFAC), and it monitors every transaction after. It handles the payment rails, so each payment lands straight in the writer's MiniPay wallet in USDT, and it keeps one record of who was paid, how much and when.

Opera stays in control. No payout goes out until someone on Opera's team approves it, and a payout that does not look right can be stopped before any money moves. Opera's team stays focused on MiniPay while Mural provides the infrastructure that facilitates all of the money movement.

What Opera built

Opera News pays its writers through MiniPay. Opera's team prepares a batch of payments, approves it, and hundreds of writers are paid at once. The money lands on each writer's phone in dollars they can hold, or send on to anyone with a phone number.

Since the first payout in July 2024, Opera has paid about 26,000 writers through MiniPay, more than 97,000 payments in all.

Absorbing the complexity

Opera never had to build or staff a payout operation. The tool a student would have built never had to exist. Its engineers stay on the wallet itself, for writers and everyone else who uses it.

The writer files the story. The payment arrives in MiniPay.