“Squad by GTCO” is a product that was developed by HabariPay Limited, which is a subsidiary of GTBank Nigeria. GTBank Nigeria, in turn, is one of GTCO Plc’s 11 subsidiaries.
The official Twitter page of the Squad, @officialsquadco, made the announcement on June 1st, 2022, that the company was completely prepared to compete in the payments and e-commerce sector in Africa.
“At Squad, we give business owners with the tools they require to flourish in a digital economy. In addition, we promote their firm and introduce them to a market that is outside the reach of their present customer base. According to the statement made by the company, “We have designed a dependable, secure, and economical payment infrastructure that will make collecting payments in-person and online simpler.”
How Squad Started…
Reports indicate that Habari Pay has been actively searching for qualified individuals to fill open positions since 2021. The FinTech Unit of GTBank is affectionately referred to as HabariPay.
In point of fact, the leadership of HabariPay was transferred from GTBank’s EBanking Unit itself. Eduofon Japhet, the Managing Director of HabariPay, previously worked at GTBank as the Group Head (GH) of Business Solutions. Of a similar manner, Mr. Adeyemi Atanda, who is now the Chief Marketing Officer of Squad and formerly headed the Digital Sales Department in GTBank, was in charge of that department.
It is common knowledge that GTCO has always had a favorable attitude toward the progression of digital technology as well as electronic approaches to problems with payments, trade, and collections.
Their focus on the consumer ensures that they always strike the mark whenever they make significant headway in the realm of e-advancement.
The bank received honors at the Electronic Payment Incentive Scheme (EPIS) Efficiency Accolades, which were held by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigeria Inter Bank Settlement System. These awards were well-deserved by the bank (NIBSS).
What Services Will Squad Provide?
We hypothesize that Squad will be managing a plethora of services not only for its parent bank but also for other clients, based on all of the signs that have come from within the bank as well as reports that have come from outside the bank.
The following is a list of the services that will be provided by Squad by GTCO:
- Payment
- Payment gateway
- POS Services
- USSD Services
- Software POS
- Bulk payment services
- Collections
- eCommerce
There will be a variety of fees, but merchants will be assessed a fee equal to one percent of the total value of each transaction.
In the end, Squad is a payment and collection solution that just requires one stop for African enterprises. The features have been meticulously developed in order to satisfy the demands and requirements of even the smallest of roadside vendors, as well as those of small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), and even of large organizations.
Do We Need Another Fintech Payments Company in Africa?
It appears that the market in Nigeria, in particular, is currently oversaturated with hundreds of different FinTech solution suppliers all competing to offer the same thing: smooth payments and collections. Nevertheless, one thing has remained the same, and that is the low adoption rate. There is a wide range of potential causes for the low rate of adoption of our homegrown financial technology solutions.
The widespread use of mobile e-payments and internet access on mobile devices are two major challenges facing the majority of African nations. For example, only 23.1% of people who use the internet in Kenya are actually making mobile payments, despite the fact that the country has the highest mobile payment adoption rate in Africa.
In addition to this, Africa suffers from the absence of a common currency that can be used as a common denominator in the processing of transactions that take place within the continent. This results in a chain of bottlenecks even when one is merely attempting to complete a straightforward transfer, for example between Ghana and Zimbabwe.
Another problem stems from the different government policies implemented in each nation. At the moment, sending money from Nigeria to a country in Europe is relatively simpler and less expensive than sending money to a country in another African region.
Due to the fact that HabariPay and GTCO have taken note of this situation, the Squad has been assembled with the intention of revolutionizing ePayments and eCommerce in Africa. Check to see if there are any APIs or complete products available in the public space.
