Nkebet Mesele is building Africa’s fintech talent pipeline through education, advisory, and inclusion initiatives.
Nkebet Mesele is working to close Africa’s fintech talent gap. Her career spans over two decades across education, telecommunications, banking, and payments. Throughout each chapter, she has focused on building systems that work for Africa.
Nkebet Mesele began her career in 1999 as a teacher in Nigeria and later co-founded a school with her mother. However, her career path soon took a different direction after she joined Celtel (now Airtel), working in telecommunications before moving to Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank).
At GTBank, she spent several years in operations, commercial banking, and payments, playing key roles in major innovations, including helping Nigeria transition from magnetic stripe cards to chip-and-PIN technology, launching Nigeria’s first Naira Mastercard to support international transactions, and contributing to the GTWorld mobile banking app, which received multiple industry awards.
Later, she moved to Visa, where her work extended her influence beyond Nigeria. As part of the sub-Saharan Africa team, she led Push Payments and Solutions Management for West and Central Africa. She helped launch Visa on mobile in Nigeria and Ghana and introduced QR code payments across several countries. In South Africa, she transformed retail stores into mini banking hubs to address financial exclusion in underserved areas.
After two decades of developing systems and launching payment products, Mesele faced a different challenge. Africa’s payments industry was rapidly growing, but the talent pipeline was not keeping pace. Too many professionals lacked access to structured, relevant, and accredited education tailored to the continent’s market realities.
This motivated her to establish Intreensic in 2023, a payments education and advisory firm aimed at bridging Africa’s fintech talent gap.
Building the future of the digital workforce
Based in Lagos but operating virtually, Intreensic provides comprehensive training on topics ranging from basic payments infrastructure to advanced areas like cross-border remittances, cybersecurity, digital regulation, and fintech entrepreneurship. Its programmes are CPD-certified, recognised in over 100 countries, and already serve learners across Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia. Expansion plans include establishing physical hubs in Kenya and South Africa to broaden its reach.
Intreensic also offers advisory services to fintech firms, banks, and regulators, assisting companies in designing strategies suitable to Africa’s regulatory and operational environments. The firm connects trained professionals with employers, organises custom graduate boot camps, and ensures a consistent flow of job-ready talent to support Africa’s expanding payments sector, projected to reach over $39 billion by 2025.
The Nkebet Mesele-led company is committed to making education accessible and scalable, especially for professionals in underserved regions, through its digital learning platform. The company also promotes inclusion by supporting underrepresented groups, particularly women, via initiatives like “Made-in-Payments,” a podcast and platform highlighting African women shaping the payments industry.
The businesswoman’s efforts extend beyond fintech. She continues to run an academy in Nigeria that supports children from low-income backgrounds, reinforcing her longstanding commitment to education and equity. What she is building with Intreensic is a long-term strategy to equip Africa with the knowledge infrastructure needed to compete globally in the digital job market.
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