Kevin Njuguna Karanja

Self-driven, versatile, and conscientious Business Processing and Card Technology Lead with over 10 years of experience in dynamic payments and financial settings within Sub Sahara Africa. Passionate about enabling clients, partners, and key stakeholders to achieve excellence through innovative solutions on financial inclusion. Successfully led engagements with strategic partners across Africa, resulting in a 33% increase in both plastic and virtual cards in the region over the past 5 years at Mastercard. Focus on maximizing shareholder value by providing strategic solutions and direction to Financial and Non-Financial institutions in areas such as Payments, Digital Operational Management, Customer Experience, and Quality Assurance. Dedicated to being a creative and persuasive leader who engages and empowers teams to develop simpler and more elegant solutions for solving complex problems.

• Portfolio Optimization - I conduct quarterly reviews with the Issuers and acquirers in my portfolio to conduct an analysis and Deep Dive into their portfolio and plug in solutions to alleviate pain points identified due to poor approval rates. Through this exercise I have assisted two tier 1 Banks in Tanzania improve their transactional approval rates by up to 37% (increase in GDV by at least $45M).
• Collaborative Engagements - I have cross collaborated and worked to onboard three major Telco partners with SSA footprint who are both on Issuing and Acceptance sides. Through working with multiple Mastercard teams, one of the telcos was able to be onboarded and issue cards in record 2 months leading to achieved revenue of $300k.
• Strategy Technical Development - As the technical Lead in Sub Saharan Africa overlooking NFIs, I have been tasked with the Card Issuing strategy development, cascading and execution across the ten countries that I manage.
• Strategic Business Partnerships - To further cement MasterCard's footprint in the region, I have worked alongside the Market Development, Products and Marketing Teams to roll-out Strategic Co-Brand Business partnerships across the region. These include, but are not limited to - Emirates Airlines, Kenya Airways and Serena Group of Hotels. These Strategic Partnerships have seen the growth of localized solutions that have thus increased Card Holder and Issuer stickiness to the overall Brand.
• Increased Profitability - As the SSA Lead for NFIs and FIs, my work has directly contributed to portfolio growth in SSA from around 15,000 cards in force (active cards) in 2019 to over 1.5 million cards by end of 2023. This directly translated to net revenue earnings of close to $3.5M per annum. The growth is attributable to increase in non-FI's (MNOs, FinTechs) customer interactions and understanding limitations of their existing technological partners, leading to portfolio flips from major competitors to the Mastercard Processing platform.
• Technical Know-How - As SSA Technical Lead, I have led in major Platform Migration and Recarding projects for six major clients. The success of these migrations was hinged on collaborative efforts through multi-level and cross-functional stakeholders' engagement.
• Business Process re-engineering - I proactively analyze and identify existing workflows and processes. From this I work to streamline and automate the manual processes of sharing periodic business and technical documentations through Mastercard Connect as opposed to through emails. This has led to increased engagement on Product Enhancements cross-sell by about 25%. Above this, I identified a gap in the current UAT customer support process, consulted with the Project Management Leads for buy-in and were able to enhance the current processes which led to 45% increase in VOC scores on ease of doing business with Mastercard.

• Mastercard Champions Lead, East Africa
• Member of Kenya Bankers Association
• Member of University of Nairobi Industrial Chemistry Association

• Master of Business Administration (MBA) for Executives - Strathmore Business School (Ongoing)
• NXT-GEN Fellowship for Moral Leadership 2023 Cohort - Mastercard (To be Completed June 2023)
• Bachelor of Science Industrial Chemistry Second Class Upper, University of Nairobi
• Lean Six Sigma White Belt Certification
• Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt Certification
• Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Certification (Ongoing)
• SCRUM Fundamentals Certification-SFC (Ongoing)
• Strathmore University CPA, Part I, Section 1 & 2 PASS
• Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education, Light Academy, A (Plain), 2003-2007

• Christine Ogola, Vice President, Customer Delivery, SSA, Mastercard, 254795742348, christine.ogola@mastercard.com
• Victor Ndlovu, Head of Business Development, EA, Mastercard, 254790773398, victor.ndlovu@mastercard.com
• Fredrick Kimani, Head, Workplace Banking, Commercial Bank of Africa (NCBA), 254725057774, fredrick.kimani@ncbagroup.com

• Technical Account Manager, Product and Services, SSA, Primary point of escalation for C level and their direct reports with regards technical support issue discussions and delivery of integrated solutions that address specific needs., Providing critical Technical and Account Management support for over fifteen, Tier 1 and 2 Financial and Non-Financial Institutions & MNOs in SSA region., Maintaining a complete technical profile outlining how Customers have implemented the various Mastercard Processing solutions and working with Product Sales on upsell opportunities., Partnering with customers to develop annual business plans and conducting Quarterly Operational Reviews (QOR) with main objective around constant improvement of transactional approval rates for XB transactions and ways of improving MPGS acceptance and declines., Through regular customer interactions, to draw out their business and operational plans and analyze pain points and provide solutions in form of PTS and/or Mastercard Advisory services and/or Products., Voice of Customer to ensure customer concerns are highlighted in triage meetings for defect prioritizations and consulting with Regional/Global Product Teams to develop working solutions either as part of customizations, enhancements and/or ad-hoc requests for customers.
• Card & Client Support Officer Experience - Commercial Bank of Africa, Accurate monitoring of online card activity to identify, minimize and prevent card fraud to safeguard interests of the bank as well as customers., Maintain and enhance communications with Credit risk management, Relationship managers and customers to facilitate flow of instructions and information to foster cooperation., Generate and review merged reports to sift fraudulent and unconfirmed transactions., Evaluate card systems and log in with IT any card related issues., Management of exceptional approvals and temporary limit increases on payments, emergencies, Analyze and manage online parameters as per Market trends and consult with Acquirer banks on Transaction Authorization, Merchant Suspicions and Reversals.
• Quality Analyst Experience Commercial Bank of Africa, Providing Executive with up-to-date reports on customer trends and recommendations, Reviewing staff performance, identifying training needs and planning training and coaching sessions, Identifying service gaps within the business and producing action plans and recommendations on overall process improvement, Management of Omni channels, Contact Centre and Telesales by providing professional and organizational development direction to service., Market surveys and benchmark reporting to identify market trends and make recommendations to ensure continuous product innovation to remain relevant., Follow up on action plans with various unit heads to ensure recommendations arising from various service gaps are implemented.