Safaricom Plc chief financial services officer Esther Masese Waititu has resigned from the telecoms company, with her departure taking effect on 31 July 2026, nearly three years after joining the firm.
Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa informed staff of the departure in an internal memo.
"I wish to announce that Esther Waititu, our Chief Financial Services Officer, will be leaving Safaricom to pursue other opportunities. At her request, the company has agreed that her last working day will be 31 July 2026," Ndegwa wrote.
Ndegwa credited Waititu with modernising M-PESA's underlying technology.
"Among Esther's defining achievements is her modernisation of M-PESA's technological infrastructure. She spearheaded the migration to Fintech 2.0, a cloud-native architecture that future-proofed the platform's reliability and expanded the Daraja developer ecosystem," he said.
Waititu joined Safaricom in February 2023 after more than 15 years in financial services, having held senior roles at Commercial Bank of Africa, Standard Chartered Bank, Stanbic Bank and KCB Group, where she was director of corporate banking before joining Safaricom.
Confirming her departure in a LinkedIn post, Waititu said the financial services ecosystem she was brought in to build was now "firmly established" and that the time felt right for "a new chapter". She added that she would share details of her next role in due course.
During her time at Safaricom, the company expanded M-PESA beyond payments into savings, insurance, credit and investment products.
Waititu highlighted Pochi la Biashara, which enables micro-entrepreneurs to separate business and personal funds, alongside Tuunza Mapato and device insurance products designed to protect customer income and assets.
She said the Ziidi savings product had attracted more than five million users to formal investing through daily interest earnings.
One of her most significant achievements was Ziidi Trader, launched on 10 February 2026.
The M-PESA mini-app enables customers, including diaspora investors, to buy and sell shares on the Nairobi Securities Exchange without a brokerage account, with a minimum investment of a single share.
Waititu said the product was developed in partnership with the Nairobi Securities Exchange, the Capital Markets Authority, KASIB Kenya and the Central Depository and Settlement Corporation.
She said Fintech 2.0 and its accompanying developer platform, Daraja 3.0, provide the infrastructure that enables third-party developers to build on M-PESA independently of Safaricom's internal teams.
Boniface Mungania, director of public sector digital transformation at Safaricom, will serve as interim chief financial services officer. Safaricom has not named a permanent successor.
Waititu's departure follows two other senior executive departures in recent months. Chief Strategy Officer Michael Mutiga, formerly chief enterprise business Officer, is leaving to become CEO of Stanbic Bank Kenya and South Sudan, effective 1 August 2026.
Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, who led M-PESA Africa for five years and briefly served as acting vhief financial services officer at Safaricom, left on 31 March 2026 to join Absa Group as chief executive of personal and private banking, based in Johannesburg.
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