Visa has handed one of its most closely watched African posts to a woman who spent the past five years building a mobile money challenger from scratch.
The card network named Anne Kinuthia-Otieno Vice President and Head of East Africa, effective August 4, 2026. She will run the role from Nairobi and oversee seven markets across the region.
Michael Berner, Visa’s Senior Vice President and Regional Managing Director for Southern and Eastern Africa, said the timing matters as much as the hire.
“Anne’s appointment comes at an exciting time for Visa and for East Africa’s digital economy,” Berner said. “Her deep understanding of the region, proven leadership experience and passion for financial inclusion will be instrumental as we continue working with clients, partners and governments to expand access to digital payments and economic opportunity.”
A Fintech Builder Moves To Card Payments
Kinuthia-Otieno joins Visa fresh off a tenure that reshaped Kenya’s mobile money market. As Managing Director of Airtel Money Kenya, she took the platform from roughly 400,000 active users to more than 5 million, and grew its agent network from 18,000 outlets to 170,000. Under her watch, Airtel Money’s share of the Kenyan mobile money market climbed from 2.9% to 10.3%, chipping away at a segment Safaricom’s M-Pesa had dominated for years. She struck bank partnerships with KCB and Diamond Trust Bank, rebuilt Airtel Money’s core platform, and pushed the business toward the merchant and agent scale that made it a credible second player in the market.
She left that post in late July 2026, announcing her departure on LinkedIn without disclosing where she was headed next. Her exit landed in the middle of a broader reshuffle across East African finance, with M-Pesa Africa’s former managing director Sitoyo Lopokoiyit moving to Absa Group and Safaricom’s Chief Financial Services Officer also stepping down around the same time.
Her twenty years in the industry stretch back further than fintech, though. Before Airtel, Kinuthia-Otieno spent years at Absa Bank Kenya across products, governance, sales and SME banking, having started her career in risk management roles at Barclays. That blend of retail banking discipline and platform building is likely part of what drew Visa to her. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce from Daystar University and an MBA from Strathmore Business School, and in 2022 the President of Kenya honoured her with the Moran of the Burning Spear, one of the country’s top civilian awards.
Why Visa Is Betting On East Africa
The appointment comes as Visa pushes harder into a region where mobile money still handles the bulk of everyday transactions. The company has spent the past year working two angles at once: modernising the pipes banks use to clear payments between themselves, and giving telecoms and fintechs faster ways to plug card payments into apps people already use.
In Kenya specifically, Visa signed a framework agreement with Kenswitch in April 2026 to overhaul the domestic systems that settle transactions between local banks. It also runs the M-Pesa GlobalPay virtual card with Safaricom, a product that lets M-Pesa users pay international merchants like Netflix and Amazon directly from their mobile wallets. That card has grown fast: active users reached 316,500 in the financial year to March 2026, up 62% from a year earlier, moving KES 12 billion across 8.5 million transactions.
Beyond Kenya, Visa has been rolling out a software kit called Visa Pay that lets banks and fintechs launch digital payment products without building the infrastructure themselves. Tanzania is already on the list of markets covered, with more expected to follow as the rollout continues.
Kinuthia-Otieno now takes charge of that regional push at a moment when banks, telecoms and card networks are all racing to own the same customer relationship. Her record at Airtel Money suggests she knows exactly what that fight looks like from the other side of the table, and Visa will be counting on her to bring that instinct in house.
For her part, Kinuthia-Otieno framed the move as a natural continuation of the work she has spent her career on.
“East Africa is one of the most dynamic and innovative payments markets in the world, with tremendous opportunities to advance financial inclusion and digital commerce,” she said. “I look forward to working with Visa’s clients, partners and talented teams across the region to help drive the next phase of growth and innovation.”
