Michael Mbuthia is a financial services professional with 15+ years of experience cutting across digital financial services, strategy formulation, project Management and business development. His working knowledge spans across Banking, Aviation, Agriculture, and impact development covering multiple geographies in Africa.

Michael is currently the Regional Director East and South Africa for AfricaNenda, a Digital Financial Services accelerator fully funded by Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and incubated by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

He was the previous project lead for Rwanda National Digital Payments Platform working directly with Access to Finance Rwanda (AFR) and National Bank Rwanda (BNR) spear-heading Interoperability blueprint development and rollout. Prior to this he served as Pesalink Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Ag-Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for Kenya Bankers Association payments services company - Integrated Payment Services Limited (IPSL) and was instrumental in leading the industry towards launching real-time interoperable payment platform.

He holds two Masters degrees, an MBA in Strategic Management from United States International University- Africa and a Master of Science in Information Technology from University of Nairobi and is currently undertaking a PhD in Information Systems at Cape Town University in South Africa with research interests in Payments Interoperability, Making Markets Work for the Poor (M4P), Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC’s) and ICT for Development (ICT4D).