Payments & Regulatory Strategy Executive
I help fintechs, banks, and crypto firms enter and scale across Africa — without the risk of a full-time hire.
20+ years leading payments and regulatory strategy across M-Pesa Africa, Visa, Letshego, and Binance
A 30-minute call — I’ll tell you honestly which engagement fits, or if it’s too early for either.
Track Record
A career spent building the systems that move money.
2026–Present
General Manager, Africa — Binance
Oversaw $20B+ in crypto transaction volume across Sub-Saharan Africa.
Built the regulatory playbook from first principles, with no established precedent.
Direct engagement with central banks and regulators across multiple jurisdictions.
2024–2025
Group Chief Digital & Data Officer — Letshego Group
$1B lending portfolio across 11 markets, with $78M in new digital revenue.
Cut operating costs 20% through platform consolidation and cloud migration; led cross-functional teams of 120+.
Delivered 25% year-on-year portfolio growth alongside the cost reduction and team scale already listed.
2021–2024
Executive Head, Business Payments — M-Pesa Africa
Grew merchant base to 1M+ across 7 markets, supported by a 600,000-strong agent network.
Delivered $300M+ in non-funded income through QR collections, bulk pay, and merchant lending; doubled the merchant ecosystem in three years while holding costs constant.
Enabled the merchant and agent ecosystem to access global payment capabilities, not just local rails.
2017–2021
Director, Products & Solutions — Visa Sub-Saharan Africa
Led global payment and remittance partnerships across 13 markets.
Expanded digital payments adoption to 35M+ users through direct C-suite partnership management.
Delivered sustained double-digit revenue growth against Mastercard, local schemes, and mobile money — not simply user growth.
Background
Built on continental scale
Sammy Mutua is a strategic fintech and payments executive with 20+ years leading market expansion, product commercialisation, and regulatory strategy across Sub-Saharan Africa. Currently General Manager, Africa at Binance, he leads regulatory strategy and commercial expansion for one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges across multiple African jurisdictions. His earlier career spans senior leadership at M-Pesa Africa, Visa Sub-Saharan Africa, and Letshego Group, building payment infrastructure and lending platforms that now serve millions of customers across the continent.
Education
MSc, Financial Economics — University of Essex, United Kingdom
BA, Economics — Michigan State University, USA
Based In
Nairobi, Kenya
Available across Sub-Saharan Africa and for global market-entry advisory.
Impact Snapshot
Leadership measured in durable outcomes.
$20B+
crypto transaction volume overseen
1M+
merchants Acquired and served
$18B+
Mobile Money payment volume
20+ Years
Experience across Africa
When I Help
For the gap between deciding to enter Africa and actually operating here.
Market Entry, De-Risked
Navigate an unfamiliar regulatory landscape, competitive terrain, and customer behavior before you commit capital. Built from direct experience navigating Kenya’s digital asset licensing process, not theoretical market research.
Partnership & Ecosystem Mapping
Identify the banks, networks, regulators, and local players who actually decide whether your product gets adopted. The same mapping discipline that built payment and remittance partnerships across 13 African markets.
A Team Before You Have a Team
Sales, operations, compliance, and country finance — recruited, trained, and managed, without a six-month executive search or the risk of a bad permanent hire. The same operating model used to lead cross-functional teams of 120+ across 11 markets.
The Growth Driver Once You’re Live
The same hands-on leadership that gets you launched keeps you scaling — pricing, partnerships, and regulatory relationships that compound market to market. The discipline behind 25% year-on-year portfolio growth in a prior role.
Services
Four ways to work together.
Flagship tier
Fractional GM
Entry & Build
$25,000–$35,000 · 3 months
Market entry strategy, partnership negotiation, and interim team recruitment and management — the full engagement, start to finish.
Fixed scope
Market Entry & Partnership Assessment
$10,000–$15,000 · 4–6 weeks
Go-to-market strategy, regulatory pathway, and partnership mapping for one market — a defined deliverable, no ongoing involvement.
Advisory
Strategic Sparring
$2,000–$3,000 / month
Senior perspective on decisions already in motion — 2–4 sessions per month, ongoing.
Retainer
Growth Driver Retainer
$6,000–$8,000 / month
Ongoing commercial leadership once you’re live — pricing, partnerships, and growth plan resets.
Scope and pricing are tailored per engagement — the figures above are indicative starting points.
Approach
The work is strategy made operational.
01 — Market entry judgment, earned the hard way
Built a leading global exchange’s Africa regulatory playbook from first principles and led direct engagement on Kenya’s digital asset legislation — the same judgment now applied to de-risking entry for the businesses I advise.
02 — Partnerships built, not just introduced
Global payment and remittance partnerships with a major card network and a pan-African bank weren’t relationship-building exercises — they were the distribution rails a 13-market business ran on. That’s the same ecosystem-mapping discipline applied to your market.
03 — Teams built and run, not advised from the sidelines
Led cross-functional teams of 120+ across product, engineering, data, and commercial functions at an 11-market financial services group — hands-on operating experience, not just strategic recommendation, behind every interim team I build.
04 — Growth that compounds, not just launches
Delivered 25% year-on-year portfolio growth and $78M in new digital revenue at that same institution — the same operating discipline that gets a business live is what keeps it scaling once you’re through the entry phase.
Five Questions Every Fintech Asks Before Entering Africa
Lessons from two decades operating across African payments, lending, and mobile money.
What merchants are actually trying to achieve.
Why onboarding keeps missing it
Does Tokenizing a Stock Actually Solve Anything?
What DTCC, NYSE, and Nasdaq's tokenization pilots actually change, what they don't, and what it means for exchanges in Africa
Onchain vs Offchain
The Africa hybrid Thesis for Block chain and Crypto expansion
Core Values
Continental Scale Execution
Regulatory Trust as Infrastructure
Traditional Finance + Crypto Fluency
Institutional Partnership Building
Build-From-Zero Operator