I grew up watching my grandmother navigate systems that were not designed for her, products that assumed, or even required, a man to cosign her ambitions. I watched her manage limited access with remarkable grace. Reminders of my grandmother are always around me, and in many ways, she became the quiet engine behind everything I have built in my seventeen years working at the heart of Africa’s financial technology ecosystem.
Granny took great pride in watching her children, and later her grandchildren, go to school and build careers. Because of her own childhood experience, it was deeply important to her that we do better.
Today, I serve as Director, Technology Account Management at Mastercard, shaping how payment infrastructure is built, deployed, experienced, and learned across Africa. But before this role at Mastercard, I spent over a decade in banking, building a strong foundation in the payments ecosystem. At Guaranty Trust Bank, I led the migration of the bank’s card portfolio to contactless technology. I pioneered the deployment of full inbranch instant card issuance and personalization, a first in Africa, which has since been adopted in card issuance kiosks and by multiple banks across the country. I optimized processes and built integration roadmaps to make payment operations easier and more efficient.
These were not small feats. They were reminders that Africa’s payment infrastructure did not have to lag a generation behind. We could lead.
Women are Africa’s most dynamic economic actors. We run markets, manage households, lead informal trade networks, and increasingly build businesses that cross borders. And yet, payment products have historically been built around assumptions that center male patterns of wealth, mobility, and formal employment. The result is friction, exclusion, and missed opportunity, not just for women, but for entire economies.
I often think about women like my grandmother in today’s day, and how they are expected to adopt modern technologies – technologies that require literacy or access to digital financial services simply to navigate.
Technology is only as powerful as its intentionality. How do we support the people who power economies but have limited financial and technical literacy?
This is the gap I think about constantly. Not just how to make payments faster, but how to make them fairer. Not just how to prevent fraud, but how to design systems that extend trust to people who have long been treated as risks rather than customers.
Meaningful gains in poverty reduction and shared prosperity are not possible without intentionally targeting vast segments of society. Markets controlled by women represent a business opportunity that can underpin enhanced productivity and economic growth. To be truly inclusive of women, we must come together to address these challenges.
As Faculty with the Mastercard EEMEA Academy, and as an ambassador with Mastercard’s Women’s Leadership Network, I carry these questions into every training, workshop, and conversation with the next generation of payment professionals. When I run our West Africa Operations Clinic, whether in person or virtually across Africa, I am not just sharing technical knowledge. I am building a community of people who understand that payments are not neutral. Every design choice is a values choice.
The women I see rising in African fintech, whether building products, shaping policy, or leading teams, are doing so with a clarity of purpose that is genuinely changing the texture of this industry. We are not just diversifying the workforce; we are diversifying the thinking. And smarter thinking produces safer, more inclusive, and more resilient payment systems.
That is not a soft argument. That is a business case.
My commitment remains what it has always been: to build ecosystems that work for everyone, and to ensure that the women building them are seen, supported, and celebrated.
Africa’s financial future is being written right now. I intend to be one of the women holding the pen.
About the Contributor
With over 17 years of experience as a payments and technology expert, Lara Randle has driven financial innovation in Nigeria and across Africa. As Director – Technology Account Management at Mastercard, she has demonstrated exceptional leadership by successfully driving optimization initiatives, project implementations, and capacitybuilding programs that have strengthened payment ecosystems across the continent.
Lara Randle’s work sits at the intersection of three core principles: technology, strategy, and inclusion. She has consistently championed payment solutions that are not only smarter and safer, but also more equitable.
Her career spans product management, technical project delivery, risk analysis and fraud management, and business process optimization, bringing rare depth to her field. She holds an MSc in Dispute Resolution from the University of Lagos. She also serves as Faculty with the Mastercard EEMEA Academy and as a Global Program Ambassador with Mastercard’s Women’s Leadership Network, where she actively fosters connection and collaboration.
Known for her strategic thinking, collaborative spirit, and deep commitment to Africa’s financial inclusion agenda, Lara Randle is a recognized voice shaping the future of payments on the continent.
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