Traditional banks had to adapt or risk falling behind when fintechs like Paystack and Flutterwave rose to prominence between 2016 and 2019 and began to upend Nigeria’s financial industry. With a market valuation of ₦2.07 trillion ($1.76 billion), GTCO is one of the most lucrative banks in Nigeria and was one of the first to react to the fintech revolution.
HabariPay, a super-app that integrated digital banking with lifestyle services like social networking, e-commerce, music streaming, and financial transactions, was released in 2018. The platform, however, found it difficult to establish a niche in any field. It was challenging to draw in and keep people because its all-in-one strategy lacked a unique feature.
The fintech company was rebranded by GTCO in 2022 as HabariPay Limited, a fintech subsidiary that provides digital financial services and payments. GTCO has been striving to make HabariPay a major force in Nigeria’s fintech industry from its inception, taking on well-funded behemoths like Paystack and Flutterwave as well as online banks like Moniepoint and OPay.
Between 2022 and H1 2024, HabariPay Limited gave GTCO ₦4.926 billion ($3.2 million) in earnings, despite the fierce competition. The company continues to provide a small total contribution to GTCO.
A profit after tax of ₦1.7 billion ($1.1 million) was declared by the fintech subsidiary in H1 2024, which represents only 0.17% of GTCO’s overall profit before tax. Although the company’s growth has been acknowledged by CEO Eduofon Japhet, she stated that HabariPay needs to grow even more to firmly establish its place in GTCO’s portfolio.
To concentrate on growing POS terminal services for retailers and making sure that mobile transfers are as smooth as card payments, the company has obtained several switching and payment licenses.
Continuing, to learn more about the firm’s payment expansion plans for 2025, BrandSpur banking and finance news desk reached Eduofon Japhet in Abeokuta, where the company hosted the second Squad Hackathon teams on Saturday, March 15, 2025.
She spoke about the journey since its debut. She said we entered a market that seemed saturated, and we needed to find a place for ourselves. We needed to find a product that was market-driven where we could add value—looking back at that journey. We wanted to focus on building local infrastructure that could support micro-payments because we saw many solutions that large companies could afford. The reason we didn’t see a lot of financial inclusion was that cash was still easier and more affordable for the bottom of the pyramid to transact in. That’s something we tried to address.
We launched an NFC-based Point-of-Sale solution that allows people to tap and turn their phones into POS terminals. We launched our switch, which allowed us to process low-ticket transactions at what we felt was an affordable rate, produce those rails ourselves, and provide those rails to the fintech and payment ecosystem as a whole.
She had this to say about why HabariPay took a different approach from competitors that relied on agency banking and POS terminals to reach the unbanked. She said It is how we looked at the market and where we wanted to add value. Like I said, that space was saturated. You had Moniepoint and OPay. They have flooded the market with cheap terminals. I don’t think it would have been the best idea for us to bring 3 million additional terminals. Maybe that’s not what the market needed at the time. We had to find a niche for ourselves where we could succeed and we could dominate. That’s why we took a different approach.
She went on to address the company’s inclusive habit since it’s digital-based and the unbanks do not have access. She said: We’re on a journey. We did two things: acquired two sets of licences from the Central Bank of Nigeria, the switching and processing licence, and the Value Added Service licence from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). It made us think that we were going to build those rails from scratch and to build those rails, we needed to have one foot into wherever connectivity was coming from. Whether it was USSD, internet, or whatever it was that would drive the payments and then begin to build our infrastructure. We built a switch. We have about 12 to 13 banks connected as well as major fintech companies. That creates a foundation for us to then begin to tackle what we think is at the lower end of the market.
Today, if you tackle the problem with very expensive card transactions, it is hard to scale downwards. We are going to begin to build solutions. What will happen is we have placed ourselves in the role of an enabler. We are also enabling a lot of people-building solutions. I think that’s going to be a critical piece of what we do.
She said this about proffering financial inclusion problems and how they can work out; she said, I always think that you can’t do financial inclusion without some kind of economic inclusion. Why people aren’t using digital systems, isn’t because they don’t want to. Sometimes they don’t have the money — there is no point. There are two ways we can tackle financial inclusion. Part of what I think agency banking did for us is that it created a new kind of business and gave some people new revenue streams and livelihood. That grew off the back of people saying “If I get that POS terminal, I can service my community. I can digitally include them and I can make money off it.” As we continue to find niches like that, I’ve seen companies that are going into the whole farming sector and are trying to digitalise that space by connecting them to the financial grid. We want to be able to support those kinds of initiatives. As long as there is a model that creates value for everybody participating in that initiative, then we’ll begin to see those numbers.
On what the company is doing to drive growth, she said, we expect that we are going to grow on all indices. We got an umbrella licence from the Central Bank that allows us to do quite several activities.
Furthering, she clarified the license, saying, we got the switching and processing licence. Inside that licence, there is a Payment Solution Service Provider (PSSP) license, a Payment Terminal Service Provider (PTSP) license, a Super Agent license, and then actual switching and processing. I think we have only utilised two of those licences. This year, we have begun our PTSP business. We have started to power Point-of-Sale terminals. That’s a new line of business for us, and we’re hoping that we can grow it.
Transfers will always be the future of the continent, and we’re looking at different ways of making transfer payments feel more like card payments. A card payment, you know, is seamless and immediate. You can print it out, charge it back, and can refund it. We need to bring that other channel – transfers – which is easier to use in my estimation and make it more accessible for more people. We need to bring it to that level of sophistication where maybe we can use it to replace agents.
