Absa is betting on technology and customer-centered banking to grow its personal and private banking business across Africa, with African fintech veteran Sitoyo Lopokoiyit leading the effort. The bank’s pitch is simple: move faster, digitize more, and pull more people into its system. For millions of people still outside formal banking, that means another giant institution trying to turn daily life into a managed customer relationship.
Lopokoiyit, the former CEO of Kenya’s M-Pesa, joined Absa in April as CEO of personal and private banking. He said he spent 19 years disrupting banks and is now running one. "I spent 19 years disrupting banks, and that was my bread and butter. Now I’m running a bank," he said. The line lands with a certain corporate irony. The disruptor has been absorbed.
Who Has the Power
Lopokoiyit said the fundamental use of money is changing, with African nations leading globally in the adoption of digital assets and cryptocurrencies. Absa is moving to meet that shift on its own terms, not by loosening control but by rebuilding it through apps, onboarding systems, and digital channels. The bank wants to shift from a "product-driven organisation to a customer-driven organisation," he said.
"We have to fix the basics like onboarding journeys — the ease with which customers can use our services is number one," he said. That language sounds friendly enough. But it also points to the same old gatekeeping, just with a cleaner interface. The bank decides the terms. The customer adapts.
Lopokoiyit said there are still unpenetrated opportunities in township and rural economies, even in South Africa, which he described as highly banked in some sectors. He said that of Africa’s 900-million adults, only about 30% have a bank account. "There’s this whole other sector of the population that’s missing," he said. That missing sector is the market. The people left out of the system are now being recast as untapped value.
Who Gets Pulled In
Lopokoiyit said fintech and mobile network operators capitalized on the unbanked "white spaces," helping drive financial inclusion in Kenya from 23% to more than 80%. The numbers matter. So does the framing. Inclusion here means bringing people into systems built by corporations, not handing them power over money on their own terms.
Absa has operated for more than 100 years and has a presence across 10 countries. It serves about 12-million customers, predominantly in South Africa. Lopokoiyit said the competitive landscape now includes non-traditional players, including supermarkets, offering banking services to customers. The old banking fortress is no longer alone. Now the same logic spreads through retail aisles and digital platforms.
He praised PayInc’s PayShap platform, used by more than 6-million people in South Africa, as an example of how banks can create value in the current environment. That value, in practice, means more efficient movement through systems designed elsewhere.
Absa plans to rethink its physical footprint, moving away from large, costly branches toward differentiated points of presence suited to an increasingly digital customer base. Fewer branches. More screens. Less face-to-face space, more managed access.
What the Numbers Say
In its most recent earnings report, the group said it recorded a 14% increase in users for its technology-backed channels. The bank said its active digital customer base grew 14% year on year to 5.4-million in the six months to end-June. In that segment, South Africa grew 10% and other African regions 21%, driven by digital onboarding improvements, enhanced app capabilities, targeted campaigns and ecosystem partnerships.
The group introduced a new pan-African operating model as the next phase in the evolution of its organizational design. Overall IT-related costs rose 7% in the period to R8.779bn. The money flows upward into systems, platforms, and corporate architecture. The people at the bottom get the interface.
In the past year, the bank signed deals with Ripple to provide digital asset custody services to customers in South Africa and with Salesforce to expand its capability. Those partnerships show where the institution is placing its bets: more infrastructure, more control, more dependence on corporate technology stacks.
Lopokoiyit said success will be judged by execution. "At the end of it all is execution, execution, execution. We need to be simpler, faster and more consistent in how our customers view their experience with us," he said. The language is polished, but the message is blunt. The bank wants smoother extraction, wrapped in convenience.
The people Absa says it wants to reach are the same people who’ve long been left outside formal finance. Now the institution is racing to capture them with digital tools, cheaper branches, and a customer-first script that still leaves the power where it’s always been.