Safaricom Financial Services boss Ronald Webb at the launch of M-Pesa One Tap on May 10, 2017. FILE PHOTO | JOHN NJOROGE | NMG
What you need to know:
CEO Bob Collymore says Mr Webb's departure is due to personal reasons.
Brian Wamatu will be standing in as interim director of financial services.
Safaricom in August 2016 appointed Mr Webb from Equity Bank, where he was the director of payments.
Kenya's telco giant Safaricom has announced that its head of M-Pesa has exited the company at a critical time when the firm is undertaking a major upgrade of the mobile money platform.
Ronald Webb, the company’s director of financial services and a former Equity Bank executive, will step down from his position Tuesday after a year in charge of the critical docket.
Bob Collymore, Safaricom’s chief executive, on Monday informed his employees of Mr Webb’s imminent departure, saying he was moving back to the United Kingdom “for family reasons.”
“I wish him all the best as he returns following 18 productive years in Kenya,” Mr Collymore said in a staff memo.
“In the meantime, I would like to ask that we all give our usual support to Brian Wamatu, who will be standing in as interim director, financial services.”
Poached from Equity
Safaricom in August 2016 appointed Mr Webb from Equity Bank, where he was the director of payments, stepping up the mobile money rivalry between the two companies.
Mr Webb had been instrumental in driving the growth of Equity Bank’s mobile money payments platform, Equitel, which he had headed for one year before being poached.
Prior to joining Equity Mr Webb was co-founder and chief architect of the Paynet and PesaPoint payment platforms in Zimbabwe and Kenya.
Mr Webb leaves Safaricom at a time when the company is undertaking a phased upgrade of its M-Pesa platform.
The improvement, which began on June 30, will see new M-Pesa features added, some functions automated and reduce the need for customers to make requests at its call centre.
It is the third major M-Pesa upgrade in the 10-year existence of the pioneering mobile money service.
Safaricom’s revenue from M-Pesa stood at Ksh55.1 billion ($550m) in the year to March, a 32.7 per cent year-on-year growth.
The telecom firm recorded Ksh1.84 trillion ($18b) in deposits in the year to March compared to Ksh1.6 trillion ($16b) in withdrawals.
