HARRISON EDEH

Habari Pay, a subsidiary of Guaranty Trust Holding Company Plc (GTCO), has turned its focus on payment infrastructure into strong financial performance, recording ₦80.9 trillion in transaction value and ₦9.7 billion in profit before tax in 2025.

Its infrastructure-first strategy has helped it transition from a consumer-focused payment application to a wholesale payments business serving fintechs and banks, although it continues to face infrastructure, regulatory, and market challenges.

An analysis of the Habari Pay Industry Report 2025, seen on Thursday, shows that the company’s transaction value rose 195.4 per cent to ₦80.9 trillion in 2025, while profit before tax increased 134 per cent to ₦9.7 billion.

It also shows that Habari Pay’s revenue is growing faster than operating expenses, indicating that investments in its payment infrastructure are beginning to generate stronger returns.

According to the company’s Managing Director, Eduofon Japhet, the decision to build its own infrastructure followed challenges with its initial product, SquadPOS, which relied on factors outside the company’s control.

“If the variables that make your product work are outside your circle of influence, you have not built a product. You have built a hope,” Japhet said.

Accordingly, this prompted Habari Pay to move upstream and develop its own payment switch, allowing it to process low-value transactions at affordable rates.

By 2025, the company had shifted from a simple SME payment platform to a wholesale infrastructure provider.

GTCO Group Chief Executive Officer, Segun Agbaje, said the strategy differed from that of many independent fintechs.

“The approach stands in deliberate contrast to the capital-intensive, loss-making strategies pursued by independent fintechs in the same period,” Agbaje said.

Infrastructure challenges forced strategic shift

Advocate Times can report that Habari Pay’s early growth was constrained by problems surrounding SquadPOS, which allowed merchants to use NFC-enabled smartphones as point-of-sale terminals.

The company noted that the product depended on NFC support that was inconsistent across Android devices in Nigeria, while unreliable mobile data also affected transactions.

Consumer adoption was another challenge it faced, as users were not yet accustomed to tapping cards on phones.

The fintech company also found that existing payment rails made low-value transactions uneconomic for many providers.

At the same time, SMEs remained underserved by traditional payment channels, while cash continued to dominate transactions.

These challenges, Habari Pay stated, pushed it towards building its own payment infrastructure rather than depending entirely on third-party systems.

The company now holds an umbrella CBN licence covering Payment Solution Service Provider (PSSP), Payment Terminal Service Provider (PTSP), Super Agent, and Switching and Processing activities.

Two of the four capacities are currently active in revenue-generating operations.

2026 outlook focuses on scale, transfers and AI

Habari Pay plans to activate its remaining licence capacities over the next 12 to 24 months, with a particular focus on expanding its PTSP business launched in 2025.

The company also plans to accelerate the deployment of physical POS terminals in 2026. The terminals will be connected to its switching rails and back-end data infrastructure, while zero processing fees on GTBank terminals are expected to support merchant adoption.

A major focus will be account-to-account transfers, which the company identifies as the dominant digital payment method in Nigeria. Habari Pay also plans to develop tools that provide real-time settlement confirmation, refunds and dispute resolution, allowing transfers to offer an experience similar to card payments at lower cost.

The company is investing in artificial intelligence, including AI-enabled tools through its Squad APIs and machine-learning applications for fraud monitoring, dispute resolution and merchant credit decisions.

Expansion remains deliberate

Habari Pay also revealed that it intends to leverage GTCO’s presence across 10 African countries and the United Kingdom, hinting that its expansion strategy would be gradual.

Rather than rapidly entering multiple markets, it plans to focus on specific opportunities such as corporate switching and cross-border settlement after establishing a stronger position in Nigeria.

The company’s long-term ambition is to become an indispensable payments infrastructure provider in Africa.