HabariPay Profit Hits ₦7.8bn as GTCO Builds Payment Rails

In Short

• HabariPay profit after tax rose to ₦7.81 billion in H1 2026, up 94.3% year on year.
• GTCO’s payments unit is pushing deeper into payment infrastructure, not just consumer-facing apps.
• The business spans a payment gateway, a switching layer, and value-added services like airtime and bulk SMS.

What Happened

HabariPay, GTCO’s fintech subsidiary, reported ₦7.81 billion profit after tax in the first half of 2026. That compares with ₦4.02 billion in H1 2025.

Operating income also grew to ₦8.83 billion, up from ₦4.61 billion a year earlier. Total assets reached ₦1.42 trillion by June 2026, compared with ₦880.1 billion in June 2025.

GTCO’s financial statements describe three main HabariPay lines.

First is its payment gateway, which helps businesses accept payments through virtual accounts, USSD (a short code menu, like dialing *123#), cards, and bank transfers. It serves tech companies, large corporates, SMEs, and micro merchants.

Second is switching. A switch is the “router” that moves transactions between banks and payment providers, covering account-to-account transfers and card transactions.

Third is value-added services, including airtime sales and bulk SMS.

HabariPay has signaled this direction before. In 2025, CEO Eduofon Japhet said the company built its own switch for low-value transactions and connected 12 to 13 banks and major fintechs.

Why It Matters

Nigeria’s payments growth is pulling competition down the stack. The CBN’s fintech policy report says nearly 11 billion transactions ran through NIBSS Instant Payment in 2024, more than double 2022.

That volume makes payment rails, licensing, settlement, and reliability key battlegrounds. Apps and user interfaces are easier to copy, but infrastructure, like switching and settlement accounts, is harder to replicate.

For fintechs that depend on banks for virtual accounts and settlement, bank-owned infrastructure plays like HabariPay could tighten competition in the back-end payments market.

For GTCO, HabariPay’s profit growth suggests payment processing and switching can become a meaningful earnings line alongside traditional banking.