‘Squad by GTCO’ is a product of HabariPay Limited, a subsidiary of GTBank Nigeria – who itself is one of the 11 subsidiaries of GTCO Plc.
On 1st June 2022, the official Twitter page @officialsquadco of the Squad announced its full readiness to take on the payments and ecommerce market in Africa.
“At Squad, we provide business owners with the tools they need to thrive in a digital economy while also promoting their business and introducing them to a market beyond their current reach. We have built a reliable, secure, and affordable payment platform that will make receiving in-person and online payments simpler.” the company stated.
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How Squad Started…
According to reports, the talent recruitment into Habari Pay had been ongoing since 2021. HabariPay is fondly called the FinTech Unit of GTBank.
In fact, the leadership of HabariPay was moved from the EBanking Unit of GTBank itself. Eduofon Japhet, the MD of HabariPay was the Group Head (GH) of Business Solutions in GTBank. In the same vein, Mr. Adeyemi Atanda – now Chief Marketing Officer of Squad was the head of Digital Sales Department in GTBank.
As most fondly say, GTCO has always maintained a positive disposition towards digital advancement and electronic solutions to payments, commerce, and collections.
Their customer-centric approach always ensures that they hit the nail each time they take giant strides towards e-advancement.
The bank was, deservedly, recipient of awards at the Electronic Payment Incentive Scheme (EPIS) Efficiency Awards organized by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigeria Inter Bank Settlement System (NIBSS).
What Services Will Squad Provide?
From all indications from inside the bank, and reports from outside the bank, we posit that Squad will be handling a host of services for its parent bank as well as other clients.
Squad by GTCO will provide services what include the following:
- Payment
- Payment gateway
- POS Services
- USSD Services
- Software POS
- Bulk payment services
- Collections
- eCommerce
The charges will vary, but merchants will be charged a fee of 1% on each transaction amount.
In all, Squad is a one-stop payment and collection solution for African businesses. The features are carefully designed to meet the demands and needs of the petty sole trader by the roadside, the Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs), and even the big corporations.
Do We Need Another Fintech Payments Company in Africa?
The Nigerian space, especially, now seems saturated with hundreds of FinTech solution providers looking to provide the same thing – seamless payments and collections. However, one thing has remained the same – underadoption. Many factors could be responsible for this lack of adoption of our homegrown FinTech solutions.
One prominent issue is the internet penetration and adoption of mobile e-payments in most African countries. For instance, in Kenya where mobile payment adoption is most in Africa, just 23.1% of the internet users actually use mobile payment methods.
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Besides, Africa is suffering from lack of a common currency which will serve as a common denominator in processing intra-continental transactions. This creates a series of bottlenecks even when just trying to conclude a simple transfer between, say, Ghana and Zimbabwe.
Another issue is the individual countries’ government policies. As of now, it’s relatively easier and cheaper to send money from Nigeria to Europe than to another African country.
Having taken note of this situation, HabariPay and GTCO have put the Squad together to revolutionize ePayments and eCommerce in Africa. Check for the APIs and full products in the public space.
