Cellulant taps ex-Agoda CFO as new finance chief in renewed pan-African push

One month after promoting a long-serving engineer to lead its technology team, Cellulant has appointed former Agoda CFO Darren Makarem as its new finance chief, completing a leadership overhaul as the Kenyan payments processor renews its pan-African growth plans.

Makarem joins Cellulant from Agoda, the online travel giant, where, as Global CFO, he oversaw a payments network managing over $12 billion in annual transaction volumes. His experience in such a multi-currency settlement and high-uptime payment infrastructure gives him what the company described as a rare “customer-side” understanding of the payments business.

The hire follows the February appointment of Michael Muriuki as chief product and technology officer, seen as the fintech’s effort to rebuild Cellulant’s executive spine after a period marked by leadership exits and strategic recalibration.

“Darren doesn’t just understand the numbers; he understands the customer,” Cellulant CEO Peter O’Toole told TechCabal. “He will leverage these insights to build a finance centre of excellence, ensuring our financial operations are as innovative, agile, and customer-centric as our products.” 

Reset mode

The executive reshuffle comes as Cellulant builds on strong operational momentum. The company, which processes over 4.5 million transactions daily, achieved profitability in 2024 and is positioning itself to capture a larger share of Africa’s digital payments, projected to reach $1.5 trillion by 2030.

Before Agoda, Makarem also held roles at Binance as regional CFO for APAC and LATAM, and most recently served as CEO of OnRamp, giving him exposure to digital assets and the evolving regulatory environment. 

Cellulant is betting that his background could prove useful as it experiments with alternative settlement rails and expands its cross-border payment business.

“What excites me about Cellulant is the quality of what has already been built,” Makarem told TechCabal. “My priority is to ensure the business has the financial discipline, insight, and operational support to move fast, stay bold, and keep delivering.”

With Makarem overseeing financial strategy and Muriuki responsible for product development and platform scalability, Cellulant has filled two executive roles as it seeks to deepen its presence across over 20 African markets and compete for enterprise clients against fintech rivals and banks developing in-house payment capabilities.