A video of Guaranty Trust Holding Company (GTCO) CEO Segun Agbaje challenging Nigeria’s biggest fintechs to publish their financial results has resurfaced online, reigniting a debate about transparency and profitability in Nigeria’s digital payments industry.
The remarks were made during GTCO’s Facts Behind the Offer presentation in 2024, but the clip has been circulating widely in recent weeks, drawing fresh attention to a challenge that remains as relevant today as when it was first issued.
“I challenge other fintechs to publish their results,” Agbaje said in the video. “Most of them, you don’t even know their results. We publish every quarter. This is a company that is P&L positive, that made N2 billion last year. It’s going to double the profit this year.”
His remarks were aimed squarely at the contrast between GTCO’s quarterly public disclosures and the opacity of privately held fintechs that dominate Nigeria’s digital payments conversation without revealing whether they are actually profitable.
Companies like OPay, valued at $4 billion ahead of a planned US IPO, and Moniepoint have attracted billions in venture capital and command enormous user bases, but neither publishes quarterly financial results accessible to the public.
Their profitability, margins, and unit economics remain largely unknown outside what investors are told privately.
What GTCO’s HabariPay’s numbers have shown since then
The reason the video keeps resurfacing is partly because HabariPay has backed up Agbaje’s confidence with results.
In the first half of 2025, the most recent period for which figures are publicly available, HabariPay recorded a profit before tax of N4.02 billion, nearly double the N2.07 billion it made in the same period in 2024, representing 95% year-on-year growth.
Operating income grew 82% to N5.05 billion, driven by higher transaction volumes and wider adoption of its payment solutions among individual users and small businesses.
The subsidiary operates across three main lines: a payment switch, value-added services, and merchant acquiring, and Agbaje has described all three as functioning well and growing. The businesses GTCO acquired in 2022 across Uganda, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and Kenya are all profitable and growing at roughly 10 times their starting size, according to his presentation.
Similar read: GTCO’s HabariPay doubles profit to N4.02 billion in H1 2025
GTCO’s broader strategy has been deliberately selective. Rather than expanding across dozens of markets, the group is focusing on countries where it can achieve meaningful scale and generate sustainable returns, a philosophy Agbaje has contrasted directly with the growth-at-all-costs model associated with venture-backed fintechs.
The challenge he issued in 2024 has not been formally answered. Neither OPay nor Moniepoint has begun publishing quarterly results. The conversation the viral video is reopening, about what profitability in Nigerian fintech actually looks like, and who is willing to show it, remains unsettled.
Also read: GTCO paid shareholders a record dividend of ₦12.76 despite earning less in 2025
