Pan-African payments company Cellulant has announced the promotion of Michael Muriuki to the newly created role of Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO). This strategic appointment elevates a decade-long company veteran to consolidate leadership over product strategy, platform development, and software engineering. The move underscores Cellulant's sharpened focus on product-led growth and infrastructure scale as it navigates the increasingly competitive African fintech landscape.
A Strategic Move in a Competitive Arena
Cellulant's decision comes at a critical time, with African payment providers facing intense competition from banks building proprietary platforms and global card networks expanding direct merchant services. Fintech rivals are also aggressively competing on pricing, reliability, and value-added offerings like data analytics and fraud prevention. Muriuki's appointment is a clear signal of Cellulant's strategy to align its technology execution tightly with its commercial and profitability objectives.
A Decade of Proven Leadership
Muriuki's ascent from an implementation engineer to CPTO reflects a journey of consistent growth and impactful leadership within the company. His deep institutional knowledge was forged through pivotal early projects, including consolidating M-PESA business-to-consumer integrations across Kenyan banks. He also led the ambitious redesign and expansion of Ecobank’s mobile banking platform, successfully deploying it across 33 African countries.
Architecting a Modern Payments Engine
As Vice President of Software Engineering, Muriuki spearheaded the critical modernization of Cellulant’s Tingg payments platform. He led the transition from legacy on-premise infrastructure to a cloud-native microservices architecture, a move that significantly enhanced scalability and operational efficiency. This technological overhaul enabled the platform to grow its daily transaction volume from one million to 4.5 million while reducing the cost per transaction by over 60%.
Beyond Transactions to Data-Driven Value
With the foundational technology in place, Cellulant is betting that data will be its key differentiator in a market where payment processing is becoming a commodity. The continent's digital payments economy is projected to reach $1.5 trillion by 2030, creating vast datasets for analysis. Under Muriuki's leadership, the company plans to leverage this transaction data to develop advanced services in commerce trends, credit risk, and fraud patterns.
A Unified Vision for Growth
Cellulant CEO Peter O’Toole praised Muriuki, stating, “I’ve seen Mike’s deep technical judgment, calm leadership, and strong sense of ownership translate directly into measurable business results.” Muriuki will now oversee the entire product portfolio, aiming to strengthen the technology foundation and build out AI and data capabilities. Muriuki himself expressed excitement to "keep raising the bar as we scale our platforms" and serve businesses across the continent.
The appointment of Michael Muriuki as CPTO is a deliberate move by Cellulant to harness internal talent and solidify its technological advantage. By unifying its product and engineering divisions under a proven leader, the company is better positioned to innovate and scale its enterprise solutions. This strategic alignment is crucial for Cellulant to maintain its competitive edge and drive its next chapter of growth in Africa's vibrant digital economy.