Tony Elumelu's Heirs Holdings-backed Redtech debuts on Financial Times Africa's fastest-growing companies list

Redtech, the payments infrastructure company backed by Tony Elumelu's Heirs Holdings, has debuted on the Financial Times Africa's Fastest Growing Companies 2026 ranking, placing 32nd out of 130 high-growth businesses across the continent and landing among Africa's top 15 fastest-growing fintech companies.

The annual ranking, produced by the FT in partnership with research firm Statista, measures compound annual revenue growth between 2021 and 2024. Companies must meet additional criteria covering minimum revenue thresholds, independence and primarily organic growth to qualify. Redtech's first appearance on the list offers an independent data point on how quickly the company has scaled since its founding.

The numbers behind that growth are substantial. Redtech said its flagship platform, RedPay, has processed $27 billion, equivalent to N37.2 trillion, in total transaction value to date, more than three times the $8.9 billion processed through the end of 2024. In 16 months, the company deployed 55,000 RedPay point-of-sale terminals across merchant locations in Nigeria, covering sectors including hospitality, energy, banking, retail, utilities and enterprise services.

The company also holds a set of regulatory licences from the Central Bank of Nigeria, operating as a licensed Payment Terminal Service Provider, Payment Solution Service Provider and Super Agent. Those approvals allow Redtech to run POS services, a payment gateway and agency banking under one structure. It also holds a Nigerian Communications Commission authorisation covering communications-enabled value-added services.

Beyond Nigeria, RedPay's infrastructure now supports payments across five UEMOA countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Mali and Senegal. A recently announced partnership with MTN's MoMo PSB and UBA connects mobile money users to participating UBA merchant locations through RedPay terminals, a step toward deeper interoperability between mobile money and traditional banking infrastructure in Nigeria.

Elumelu, who chairs Heirs Holdings, linked the company's recognition to a broader investment thesis his group has been building around financial infrastructure across the continent. "Africa's next growth era will be powered by entrepreneurs, enterprises, and the infrastructure that enables them to succeed," he said in a statement. "Redtech's recognition among Africa's fastest-growing companies demonstrates what is possible when we invest in solutions built for Africa's realities." He described the company's work as Africapitalism in practice, the principle he has long advocated that positions private-sector investment in Africa as both commercially viable and developmentally significant.

Emmanuel Ojo, Redtech's chief executive, framed the FT ranking as recognition of the infrastructure the company is building rather than its transaction numbers alone. "At Redtech, growth is not only about transaction value or market reach; it is tied to a belief that when African businesses have payment systems they can trust, they are better placed to trade, serve customers and expand with confidence," he said.

Redtech operates across two business lines. RedPay is its payment infrastructure arm, covering merchant collections, payment processing, reconciliation and disbursement. SITCOM is its integrated energy technology solution built for upstream oil and gas operators. The combination of financial technology and energy technology under one corporate structure reflects the Heirs Holdings model, which has built stakes in banking through United Bank for Africa and Tony Elumelu Foundation, power generation through Transcorp Power, and upstream energy through Heirs Energies.

The company is working toward expanding RedPay's reach to 29 African countries within the next year, according to its growth roadmap. That timeline is aggressive given the regulatory, infrastructure and commercial complexity of scaling payment systems across multiple African jurisdictions simultaneously. Each market requires separate licensing, local partnerships and compliance with varying central bank frameworks.

The payments sector across Sub-Saharan Africa has attracted significant capital over the past five years as investors bet on growing smartphone penetration, rising e-commerce volumes and the push from governments and international development institutions to increase financial inclusion. Nigeria, as the continent's largest economy by GDP and most populous country, sits at the center of that story. Redtech's position as a licensed infrastructure provider, rather than a consumer-facing wallet or app, places it at the layer beneath the products that consumers see, processing the transactions that other fintech companies rely on to function.

That infrastructure positioning, if sustained as the company scales into new markets, is the basis on which Elumelu and the Heirs Holdings team are building the long-term commercial case for the investment.