Before Hubtel 

A betting company entering Ghana with no payment infrastructure 

A leading pan-African sports betting company entered the Ghanaian market with a strong product and a large customer base already built across other African markets. What they did not have was a way to collect money or pay money out to their customers. 

In the betting industry, a customer usually deposits money into their account, places a bet, and if they win, expects to receive their winnings quickly. Those two actions, depositing and withdrawing, are the core of the business. If either of them fails, even for a few minutes, the customer notices immediately and the business stands at risk of losing trust. The faster the event, the faster the expectation. A customer watching a live match and trying to place a bet has very little tolerance for payment glitches. 

Finding a payment processor that could handle that kind of volume in Ghana was paramount. The company needed a partner that could process deposits at very high speed, disburse winnings just as fast, and hold up reliably during the peak moments when thousands of customers are active at the same time.  

They also needed payment channels that reached all their customers, not just those with smartphones or bank accounts. Customers who did not have smartphones needed a USSD code to transact. Any payment solution that worked only for smartphone users would leave a fraction of the market unreachable. 

Hubtel was the first payment processor the company worked with in Ghana. There was no existing infrastructure to migrate from. The entire payment operation was built from a standing start. 

Bringing Clarity 

Building the payment infrastructure the business needed to operate 

Hubtel connected the two core payment flows the business runs on. The Receive Money API handles customer deposits: a customer adds funds to their betting account using mobile money or bank, and the transaction is confirmed instantly. The Send Money API handles disbursements: when a customer wins a bet, the winnings are sent directly to their mobile money. Both APIs were exactly what the business needed to handle the speed and volume that a live betting operation demands.  

We also provided a USSD payment channel to reach customers who did not use smartphones. A customer can deposit into their account by dialing a short code, without needing internet access. 

On top of the payment channels, we provided a set of supporting services. An SMS and Notification API to deliver one-time passwords, transaction confirmations, and campaign messages to customers. A Balance Query API lets the operator check account balances programmatically. A Transfer API moves funds between accounts. A Merchant Dashboard gives the operator’s team a view of transaction activity across all channels in one place. 

The demands placed on this infrastructure were significant from the start. Betting transactions usually arrive in bursts, concentrated around major fixtures and live events. During a Champions League evening or a major African competition, the volume of deposit and withdrawal requests rises sharply in a very short window. Building infrastructure that could absorb those spikes without slowing down or failing required Hubtel to invest deeply in the reliability and capacity of its payment platform. The infrastructure we provided to serve this business became the most capable version of its payment systems at that point in time. 

The solutions Hubtel provides to the operator: 

Putting Management in Control 

Reliability as the foundation of a high-volume operation 

For a business that processes transactions around major sporting events, the most important thing a payment platform can provide is not just speed. It is consistency. A system that works well most of the time but fails during the moments of highest demand is not a system a betting operator can build on. 

The Merchant Dashboard gives the operator’s team a real-time view of what is flowing in and out across all payment channels. Deposits, disbursements, transaction counts, and channel performance are visible in one place. When a live event is driving high volumes, the team can see what is happening on the dashboard as it happens, rather than finding out after the fact. 

Five years on, we have processed 2.98 billion successful transactions. The word successful in that figure carries operational weight. It means the vast majority of what customers have tried to do has worked. 

Pursuing Growth: 

Five years, GHS 162 billion, and a record set every year 

In 2021, Hubtel processed GHS 5.94 billion in combined transaction value for the operator across all payment channels. In 2025, that figure was GHS 52.53 billion. From one year to the next, across every year in the dataset, the total has grown. 

Figure 1: Combined transaction value processed by Hubtel, 2021 to 2026 YTD (GHS Billions) 

The growth was steepest in the early years. Combined transaction value grew 122% in 2022 and 96% in 2023. These were the years in which the operator established its full commercial scale in Ghana, building a customer base and a volume of activity that has continued to grow since. 

By 2025, we had processed GHS 28.88 billion in deposits alone across 625.1 million transactions. That is an average of more than 1.7 million deposit transactions every single day of the year. The Send Money API processed GHS 23.65 billion in the same year, distributing winnings to customers across 100 million individual disbursements. 

Figure 2: Receive Money and Send Money volumes by year, 2021 to 2026 YTD (GHS Billions) 

Transaction volumes tell the same story from a different angle. On the Receive Money API, the number of deposit transactions grew from 204.6 million in 2021 to 625.1 million in 2025. On the Send Money API, disbursement transactions grew from 28.1 million to 100 million over the same period. Together, both API processed 725 million transactions in 2025 alone. 

Figure 3: Transaction volume by channel, 2021 to 2026 YTD (Millions) 

In 2021, the average Receive Money transaction per customer was worth GHS 15.91. By the first five months of 2026, it had grown to GHS 53.22. On the Send Money API, the average disbursement grew from GHS 95.43 in 2021 to GHS 263.28 in 2026 YTD. This indicates that customers are not only transacting more often. They are transacting at meaningfully higher values each time. 

Figure 4: Average transaction value by channel, 2021 to 2026 YTD (GHS) 

The full year-by-year breakdown: 

 
By May 2026, Hubtel had already processed GHS 29.68 billion for the operator in the first five months of the year. That is more than the entire combined value for 2022 in less than half the time. If the pace holds, 2026 will set a new record. What started as a connection between a new market entrant and a local payment processor has, over five years, become one of the largest payment operations in Ghana, and by every available measure, it is still accelerating. 

Before Hubtel: 

An insurance company that could only sell when its offices were open 

Ghana’s insurance market runs on agents and brokers. An agent or broker finds the customer, explains the product, processes the policy, and collects the premium. The system works when the agent can work. When the agent cannot, nothing moves. 

For this insurer, that meant every sale depended on office hours. A customer who wanted to buy a motor policy on a Saturday had one option: wait until Monday. An agent who had a willing buyer at 7pm had no way to close the sale. There was no agent portal, and branch staff were not available outside working hours. The customer had to wait. Some waited. Many did not. 

Payments, when they did come in, arrived through every channel available. Cash at the counter. Mobile money. Bank transfers. Cheques. Each one landed in a different place and stayed there until someone manually pulled it all together.  

The reporting system they used was only accessible to staff. That meant a customer who wanted to buy could not do it on their own. An agent who wanted to sign someone on could not do that. Every transaction required a branch, a desk, and someone sitting at it. 

Insurance is a business built on relationships and timing. The relationship part worked. The timing did not. Customers who needed to act outside working hours had nowhere to go, and agents who wanted to serve them had no tool to help. 

Bringing Clarity: 

Putting insurance in the hands of agents and customers, wherever they are 

Hubtel came onboard to build a digital distribution and management system that would allow the business sell and serve outside the limits of its branches. The solution was direct: give agents a mobile tool, give customers a self-service option, and give branch staff a live view of the policies in their care. 

Hubtel built three interconnected portals and refreshed the company’s website. 

The Agent Portal was designed to work anytime, anywhere. An agent can now generate an insurance sticker, process a motor policy, or renew a travel policy from wherever they are. A customer who wants to buy on a Saturday afternoon can complete the transaction with their agent without either of them needing to set foot in a branch. 

The Customer Portal gives policyholders direct access to their own accounts. They can buy a motor or travel policy, renew an existing one, or manage multiple policies from their device. 

The Staff Portal gives branch teams a live view of what is happening in their branch: active policies, the total premiums those policies represent, and policies expiring within the next 90 days. Before this, a branch manager who wanted to know how many customers were coming up for renewal had to run a manual report from the system.  

Alongside the three portals, the company’s website was reorganized. An AI-powered chatbot, built to handle customer inquiries and capture leads, was integrated into the site. The chatbot has since generated significant customer interaction volume, helping the business understand what customers are asking and what they need before they ever speak to an agent. 

The five components Hubtel built: 

Putting Management in Control: 

A live view of what every branch holds and what every agent earns 

Before the portals existed, staff relied on an internal system to understand what had been collected and which policies were active. The Staff Portal introduced a better management system. A branch manager can now open the portal and see exactly how many policies are active, how much premium those policies represent, and how many customers are approaching their renewal date. Policies expiring within 90 days are surfaced directly, giving staff a clear, time-sensitive list to work from rather than a report they must search through. 

For the business, the Agent Portal introduced a layer of performance visibility. Every transaction an agent processes goes through the portal; the business can now see how much each agent is collecting, in which months, and from which policy lines. That data is the foundation for understanding which agents are most productive and where additional support or incentive would have the most impact. 

The monthly collection data from the Agent Portal tells its own story. In January 2026, agents collected GHS 604,794 through the portal. By May 2026, that figure had grown to GHS 970,649; a 60% increase in five months. The business can see that growth in real time and make decisions based on what is happening, not on what happened last month. 

What changed operationally: 

Pursuing Growth: 

What agents with better tools produce 

The clearest proof of what the platform has produced is in comparison between agents who use it and agents who do not. 

Between January and May 2025, we tracked the performance of two groups of agents: 50 agents actively using the Agent Portal and 462 who were not. The portal agents sold an average of 16.87 policies per month. The non-portal agents sold an average of 9.16 per month. On a per-agent basis, portal users sold 84% more policies than their counterparts who were still working without a digital tool. 

Figure 1: Average policies sold per agent per month, January to May 2025 

The consistency of that advantage matters as much as the average. The portal agents outperformed non-portal agents in every month tracked: January, March, April, and May. The gap was widest in May, where portal agents averaged 14.82 policies against 5.16 for non-portal agents, a difference of nearly 3 to 1 that month. The advantage was not a single month of strong performance. It held across the whole period. 

The portal collection figures show the same direction of travel. In October 2024, when the portals first went live, total monthly collections through all three portals came to GHS 3,865. By July 2025, that figure had reached GHS 1.67 million in a single month. That is a growth of more than 430 times in nine months. 

Figure 2: Monthly collections through all portals, October 2024 to May 2026 (GHS) 

By 2026, the Agent Portal had become the dominant collection channel. Of the GHS 1.41 million collected across all portals in May 2026, the Agent Portal accounted for GHS 970,649, just under 69% of the total. The Customer Portal, which allows policyholders to transact directly without an agent, contributed GHS 114,765, its highest monthly figure to date and a sign that direct customer adoption is also building. 

Figure 3: Portal collections by channel, January to May 2026 (GHS Thousands) 

The Agent Portal has 50 active users who consistently outperform a group eight times larger that does not use it. Monthly portal collections have grown from GHS 3,865 in October 2024 to GHS 1.41 million by May 2026. The question the business now faces is straightforward: what happens to overall policy volumes when the remaining agents get the same tool the top 50 are already using. 

Before Hubtel: 

A payroll with no way to confirm who it was paying 

When a payment system processes thousands of transactions every month, the question that matters most is not whether the money moved. It is whether it moved to the right person. For an organisation running a large-scale payroll system, that question had gone unanswered for years, and the cost of leaving it unanswered had been significant. 

The system managing these payments ran on submitted lists of eligible beneficiaries. Names came in from various sources into payroll, and at the end of each cycle, money was paid to these individuals. There was no step in that process to confirm that the person on the list was a real person, that they were the right people collecting the funds, or that the account receiving the money belonged to them. 

The result of that gap was costly. Between 2018 and 2024, approximately GHS 548 million was lost to fraudulent entries and weak controls across the payment system. People with unchecked access to the central database could include names that had no legitimate claim to the funds. External contractors managing the system could modify records without formal approval. The list of beneficiaries came in as documents and spreadsheets, and there was no mechanism to catch an entry that should not have been there before the money went out. 

On the administrative side, there was no single record that could show who had been paid, where the funds had gone, or who had authorised each transaction. When questions arose about a payment, the answers required manual effort across disconnected records and still did not always produce a complete picture. 

The problem was not that the payments were wrong. The problem was that nothing in the system confirmed the right person was the one collecting them. 

Bringing Clarity: 

Building a system that knows who it is paying prior to disbursement 

Hubtel was brought in to rebuild the payroll system with identity verification at its foundation. The starting point was a simple principle: before any payment moves, the person claiming it must prove they are who the payroll says they are. 

To do that, Hubtel connected the system to Ghana’s National Identification Authority, which holds a biometric record for every registered Ghana Card holder, including a photograph taken at registration. This connection is the core of how the new system works. 

When a beneficiary logs into their portal to access their payment, the system asks for their Ghana Card number and take a live photograph of themself. That photograph is compared in real time against the image held in the NIA database. If the faces match, access is granted. If they do not match, access is denied. No human reviews the check, and no manual override exists in this new system. 

The second layer of verification applies at the point of transfer. A beneficiary can only move their money to a bank account or mobile money account registered in the same name as their Ghana Card. The money cannot be sent to a relative, a colleague, or any third party. It goes only to an account that belongs to the verified individual. Since bank and mobile money accounts in Ghana now require Ghana Card details to open, this name-matching step closes the last gap in the chain. 

On the management side, Hubtel built an admin portal that gives the institution overseeing the payroll a full view of the entire operation in real time. Every beneficiary’s record is visible, including their Ghana Card details, their allocated payment, whether they have been paid, and if they have moved their funds, the account name and number they moved it to. Nothing in the disbursement process is unrecorded. 

Hubtel integrated APIs so that funds move directly from the payroll system into recipients’ verified accounts and refreshed the organisation’s public-facing website. 

The full set of components Hubtel built: 

Putting Management in Control: 

A complete record of every payment, visible at any time 

The most immediate change the new system brought was not in how the money moved. It was in who could see where it was going 

Before the platform, tracking a disbursement required pulling information from multiple disconnected systems and reconciling it manually. There was no single place to look up whether eligible beneficiaries had received their payment, whether they had withdrawn it, or what account it had gone to. 

The current admin portal changes that. Every transaction in the system carries a full record: who has been paid, their Ghana Card details, the amount they were allocated, whether the biometric check passed, the transfer instruction and the beneficiary account name. An administrator can look up any beneficiary, any transaction, or any disbursement and get the complete picture in seconds. 

The traceability also works as a control mechanism. Because the system records every step of the verification and transfer process, it is not possible for a transaction to be completed and then disputed without a record. A beneficiary who withdrew their money cannot claim otherwise. A transfer to an account that does not match the Ghana Card name cannot be completed in the first place. 

For the first time, the organisation has a transparent system that gives them every necessary information. The scale of what goes out each month, tens of millions of cedis to tens of thousands of people, now has a management system that can account for every cedis of it. 

Pursuing Growth: 

Two months in, GHS 88.5 million out, and a payroll that finally knows who it is paying 

The system went live and ran its first two disbursement cycles within the space of two months. These are the first payments in the history of this payroll system where every single disbursement was preceded by a live biometric identity check and followed by a name-verified transfer. 

In May, we processed payments of about GHS 55 million to over 77,000 beneficiaries and about GHS 33 million to 50,000 beneficiaries in June 

Figure 1: Disbursements by payment run 

The verification architecture also has an emerging role that will become clearer over time. When beneficiaries do not collect their money within a defined period, the organisation will issue a recall notice giving them a set number of days to claim the funds. Individuals who do not respond within that window will have their unclaimed payments returned to the institution. At that point, the system will be able to identify with certainty which unclaimed amounts belong to genuine beneficiaries who simply have not yet collected, and which are funds that nobody with a verified identity ever came to claim. That distinction is what will eventually allow the institution to measure how much the verification layer has reduced unauthorised claims on the system.  

The infrastructure is in place and operating. Every payment is accountable, verifiable, and fully traceable. 

Kokomlemle, Accra – March 28, 2024— Hubtel, a leading Ghanaian payment services provider, today announced the completion of commercial agreements with the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), the country’s biggest power distributor. This partnership has transformed ECG’s operations and increased revenue collection significantly. 

Hubtel’s relationship with ECG goes back to 2007, when the company, then operating as SMSGH, deployed ECG’s very first APIs for accessing postpaid bills and sending SMS alerts. In 2022, the relationship was rekindled when Hubtel approached ECG with unsolicited proposals to offer its billing and payment technology to solve ECG’s numerous commercial challenges. By July 2022, an aggressive digital transformation plan was launched by the Board of Directors of ECG, which included a proof-of-concept agreement for Hubtel to implement its proposed solutions at no upfront cost to ECG.  

In fulfillment of the requirements of the proof-of-concept, Hubtel re-designed, developed, and implemented a complete overhaul of ECG’s commercial systems and payment frameworks and also took over the responsibility for processing and securing payments for bills, electricity meter credits, vendor quota purchases, and non-energy invoices.  Hubtel also collaborated with other major technology service providers and relevant departments within ECG to complete the overhaul of ECG’s commercial systems and empower the company’s staff to support revenue collection and growth.  

Before Hubtel’s involvement, ECG faced significant financial and commercial challenges. Hubtel released an accompanying presentation outlining these challenges and the plans it has implemented to resolve them permanently. 

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Since the full launch of the new commercial systems in March 2023, ECG has seen the biggest jumps in its revenues and customer satisfaction ratings. 

Speaking on the news, Alex Bram, CEO of Hubtel, expressed pride in the company’s contribution to ECG’s digital transformation journey, stating, “I am proud that our billing and payment technology has proved to be exceptionally useful to ECG’s digital transformation plans. As you know, ECG is such a vast organization with very big legacy problems. So, when the Board of ECG accepted our unsolicited proposals to transform its commercial operations, we knew we had to bring the very best of our experience and technology. And I’m happy we have delivered on time and within the budget limits set by the Board.” 

He further added, “Beyond the successes we have already chalked up on this project, I’m excited about our ability to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to monitor consumption and payments of all customers to detect illegal connections, abnormal behaviour, and tampered or faulty meters. This is not only introducing a new regime for protecting ECG’s revenues but also helping boost the company’s financial performance and strengthen Ghana’s economy.” 

In a note, the Head of Infrastructure at Hubtel, Francis Wilson wrote that “We have tremendously reduced the frequent downtimes, erratic service failure, and poor network performance that was affecting both prepaid and postpaid metering systems. Through the implementation of real-time monitoring tools and a dedicated, proactive monitoring team available 24/7 to oversee transactions, infrastructure, applications, metering systems, and networks, ECG’s metering systems now achieve uptime levels consistently surpassing 99% for many days, leading to improved service quality and customer satisfaction, ultimately driving revenue growth.” 

In an interview, Patrick Asare-Frimpong, Head of Products at Hubtel, emphasized the need to keep in mind the sole objective of constant innovation to drive revenue growth for ECG as demanded by the Board and management of ECG. “This partnership empowers both ECG and its customers to foster a more efficient service delivery. Hubtel’s teams have played a key role in developing several new products and systems, such as the ECG PowerApp mobile application, ECG PowerApp web application, third-paying vending systems, bank & fintech integration tools, staff portal, backend portals, real-time revenue monitoring and assurance systems, and an all-new OperationZero App to tackle power theft specifically. The most important requirement here is to keep improving these systems until ECG becomes strongly profitable.” 

Commenting about the cost of the project and the recurring operating costs of the new systems, Cornelis Rouloph Otoo, Hubtel’s Head of Corporate and Legal Affairs, explained that “While the project is still ongoing, Hubtel’s work with all the other consultants and third-party service providers have not exceeded the US$25m limit we committed to. So far, US$ 12m of this has been accessed to pay for software license fees, database license fees, cloud infrastructure fees, service support, and engineering man-hours. For these systems, ECG has demanded to own all licenses and intellectual property comprehensively.” 

On the recurring costs of the project, he added that, “As we do with our standard agreements with merchants and retailers using Hubtel’s platform, we charge a fee of 1.95% on all transactions processed through the platform. 1% of this 1.95% is typically retained by the mobile money and card scheme providers, and Hubtel receives 0.95% as our fees. In the case of ECG and the complexities of its settlement requirements, we passed on all fees retained by the upstream mobile money & card, settlement, and banking service providers directly to ECG so that we can maintain our fee of 0.95%. Thus, for clarity, Hubtel’s recurring fee for managing ECG’s new commercial systems is 0.95% – the same as we receive from every business that uses Hubtel’s platform.” 

Mr. Otoo went on to say that “…the current payment processing, settlement, and transfer arrangements place significant responsibilities on Hubtel to ensure operational excellence at all times, and we have since November 2022 fulfilled this obligation without any glitch.” 

About ECG 

The Electricity Company of Ghana is the country’s biggest power distributor whose main objective is to supply/distribute electrical energy to the people of Ghana within the Company’s operational areas. The Company aims at operating on sound commercial lines in the discharge of its duties. It also aims at judicious supervision of rural electrification projects on behalf of the Government of Ghana.  

About Hubtel 

Hubtel is a leading indigenous Ghanaian tech company that makes it easy for people to find and pay for everyday essentials and connect with businesses. The company has a mobile application that lets you order food and everyday essentials, pay bills, and make payments. 

The company’s mission is to drive Africa forward by enabling everyone find and pay for everyday essentials. Hubtel is aiming to be Africa’s most useful company; building a platform that everyone can find, pay and easily partake in the emerging digital economy across the continent. 

In a remarkable display of dedication to education and a commitment to giving back, Hubtel, a wholly owned Ghanaian company with deep ties to St. Augustine’s College, has pledged its support to the APSU ’99 Legacy Project.  

The APSU ’99 Legacy Project holds special significance for Hubtel, as all three of the company’s co-founders—Leslie Kwabena Gyimah, Ernest Apenteng, and Alex Bram—are proud alumni of St. Augustine’s College, belonging to the ’99 year group. Their shared journey through the halls of this venerable institution has forged a strong bond between Hubtel and their alma mater. 

The alumni of the 1999 year group of St. Augustine’s College on Saturday, August 12, 2023, unveiled the APSU ‘99 Legacy Project at the launch of the school’s 94th speech & prize giving at the Coconut Groove Hotel. 

In a video communication to the ‘99-year group, the CEO and co-founder of Hubtel, who was a guest speaker at the launch of the project, Mr. Alex Bram expressed the significance of contributing to the APSU ’99 Legacy Project. “The road to quality education and the development of Ghana is littered with the achievements of people who attended some of the very best secondary schools in West Africa,” the CEO stated. “Secondary education is the bedrock of Ghana’s education, and it’s a very important gesture for us to continue this legacy in supporting our school and continuing what the pioneers have done.” 

The CEO emphasized the importance of quality education and facilities for the growth of the country. With the increased pressure on school infrastructure due to the government’s free SHS policy, St. Augustine’s College, like many other institutions, faces challenges in providing a conducive learning environment. “Quality education requires quality facilities,” Mr. Bram continued. “That is the more reason why we need to support the project of renovating some of the facilities in the school to help the school move things along and also help all the students to enjoy the facilities that we enjoyed when we were in the school.” 

The APSU ’99 Legacy Project is focusing on the renovation of an 18-room classroom block, a vital hub for countless students. The CEO revealed that the executive board of the ’99 group had approached Hubtel’s founders about the state of the classroom block, highlighting the urgent need for renovation and support. “Our help will go far in helping the school maintain the status quo and help the current students enjoy this facility,” he remarked. 

To kickstart the initiative, Hubtel, through its CSR wing, Hubtel Pledge, committed a generous seed fund of GHS800,000 to the project. This significant contribution will set the wheels in motion, though it’s acknowledged that additional funds are needed to fully complete the renovation project and organize the upcoming 94th speech and prize-giving day event. The CEO urged all alumni to unite and rally sponsors to contribute, ensuring the project’s success. 

Mr. Bram believes that the collective efforts to support St. Augustine’s College will serve as an inspiration to current students, guiding them to chart their own paths to success. “With the support and contributions coming from all over the world, from all Apsunians and from sponsors, I am sure it will inspire the students that these are people that have walked their path before and these people are doing very well,” the CEO asserted. 

As the legacy project gains momentum, it is expected to leave an indelible mark on St. Augustine’s College, Cape Coast, and contribute to the ongoing growth and development of Ghana.