By Bayo Bernard Business Editor
When the Group Managing Direcror of Guaranty Trust Company, Segun Agbaje announced the take off of HabariPay last year, only a few gave it a chance of success in Nigeria, considering the number of Fintechs already in operations in Africa’s economic powerhouse.
Some financial experts have also mentioned the traditional banking culture in the country as one of the reasons why Habari may perform below expectations.
But Aloy Chief, the Managing Partner and Chief Executive Officer, CEO, SAANA Capital, had at the time urged customers to give HabariPay a chance because it offered GTCO an opportunity to get back on track to compete in the payment market.
“Nigerian banks need to be retooled and reinvented, and fast. The era of monopoly trusts mollycoddled by the regulator may be fast approaching its expiration date (Nigeria is broke and there’s only so much paper the regulator can print after all),” Chife said.
He was right.
Agbaje who spoke after GTCO received the approval of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, to operate assured the banking public that the platform will reinvent the role of banking in the country.
“By reimagining the role of banking and driving innovation in how we serve customers, we have built a platform that is less about us as a bank and more about the customers and everything they need to enable their lifestyle,” Agbaje said.
He couldn’t have been more succinct.
HabariPay a fintech firm fashioned in the manner of WorldPay, a globally renowned payment processing company has become one of the most profitable Fintech firms in the county, according to figures from the company.
Speaking on the Groups 2022 financial report on Wednesday in Lagos, the Group’s chief executive said HabariPay has become a torchlight for other Fintech companies in many ways, barely one year in business, noting that the firm now has an edge over other Fintechs in the industry.
The firm, according to Agbaje has also become the most profitable and transparently- run Fintech, by records among it peers.
Agbaje who described the figures being churned out by some fintech firms as a ruse said the Fintechs have so far refused to make their financial records public like HabariPay, for the banking public to know their true state of profitability.
He said HabariPay success has clearly shown that GTCO has an edge over other competitors, saying no bank “can beat us. We will compete with you on two fronts. We will compete with you as a bank and we will compete with you on Habari.”
Agbaje said “if you say we are slow in the bank Habari is not slow” and is the best among other Fintechs considering that “none of them publish their profits.”
The GTCO chief executive said HabariPay made over N900 million profit last year, and has recorded N400 million in the first quarter of 2023, HabariPay financial, he said, is regularly publishing its financial to the public because GTCO is interested more in transparency and making returns to shareholders rather than harping on market share and equity.
Other Fintechs should “publish their own financial” statements he said, adding that “they are all going for equity. The whole thing that you are beating the banks, we don’t even know if yiu are beating yourselves. Let’s see your PNL. May be you are even making loses.”
As one of GTCO ambitious efforsts to redefine banking services in the country, key players in the industry insist that HabariPay has now become a platform offering users direct access to the largest catalogue of on-the–pad services such as mobile banking, mobile shopping, online music, among other seamless transactions.
