Bode Abifarin: From Flutterwave COO to CEO of MTN Nigeria’s MoMo PSB

There is something interesting about watching an executive move from the operational engine room of one fintech giant into the chief executive office of another.

Bode Abifarin is now making that transition, moving from her former role as Chief Operating Officer of Flutterwave to become the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of MTN Nigeria’s MoMo Payment Service Bank, effective September 1, 2026.

At first glance, it may look like another executive appointment in Nigeria’s increasingly crowded fintech industry. But Abifarin’s move is more significant when viewed against the career she has built and the point at which MoMo PSB is entering its next phase.

She is not arriving as someone learning the digital payments business from scratch; she is moving into the top job with more than two decades of experience across financial services, consulting, digital payments, fintech, strategy, operations and business transformation.

The Career Behind the Appointment

Before Abifarin became a familiar name within Africa’s fintech ecosystem, she spent about 15 years at KPMG, eventually rising to Associate Director in its Management Consulting practice.

Her work involved advising financial institutions and other organisations across Africa on strategy, transformation, customer experience and business growth, giving her exposure to the structural side of how financial businesses operate long before she moved into the fintech environment.

Then came Flutterwave. Abifarin joined the company in 2018 after her time at KPMG and eventually became its Chief Operating Officer.Flutterwave itself described her departure in 2024 as the exit of an executive who had managed day-to-day operations and played a major role in improving how the company supported its customers. The company also credited her with helping build the operational foundation behind its growth.

That experience matters because the COO role is often less visible than the CEO position but sits close to the machinery that determines whether a business can actually execute its ambitions.

Expansion sounds impressive in an announcement, but expansion across markets requires systems, people, processes, regulatory relationships and the ability to make a growing organisation function without collapsing under its own complexity.

Those are the kinds of experiences Abifarin now takes to MoMo PSB. After leaving Flutterwave, she founded Strata Advisory, a technology-focused advisory business aimed at helping companies scale and improve operational performance.

Her career therefore has not followed a simple climb from one corporate title to another; it has moved between consulting, fintech operations and entrepreneurship, each stage adding another layer to her understanding of how businesses grow.

Why MoMo PSB Matters

To understand why her appointment deserves more attention than a conventional executive announcement, it is necessary to look at the company she is inheriting.

MoMo PSB is part of MTN Nigeria’s fintech operations and operates under a Payment Service Bank licence issued by the Central Bank of Nigeria. Its business sits within the push to make digital financial services more accessible, particularly to Nigerians who remain underserved by conventional banking infrastructure.

That makes financial inclusion more than a phrase in a corporate statement. For a business operating at the intersection of telecommunications and financial services, the opportunity is tied to how easily people can send money, make payments and access digital financial products through technology.

But MoMo PSB is also entering a period of structural change. In April, MTN Nigeria shareholders approved a transaction under which MTN Group would acquire a 60 percent stake in MoMo PSB and Y’ello Digital Financial Services, while MTN Nigeria would retain 40 percent. The transaction was valued at about ₦152.06 billion and forms part of MTN Group’s broader strategy to strengthen its fintech operations.

So Abifarin is not simply taking over a company and continuing business as usual. She is stepping into leadership while its ownership structure and strategic direction are being reshaped.

What Her Flutterwave Experience Could Mean

The most obvious connection between Abifarin's previous and new roles is payments. At Flutterwave, she operated within a business whose growth depended on building payment infrastructure, entering new markets and navigating complex regulatory environments.

MoMo PSB presents a different operating environment, but many of the underlying challenges are familiar: scale, regulation, customer trust, technology, operational efficiency and the ability to turn financial products into services people actually use.

Her challenge at MoMo, however, will not simply be to make the business bigger. The Nigerian fintech market is already crowded, with consumers having numerous options for payments and digital financial services.

Growth therefore has to mean more than acquiring customers; it has to mean creating reasons for those customers to remain, trust the platform and find genuine value in the services available to them.

This is where Abifarin's background in operations and transformation becomes particularly relevant. Her stated priorities include expanding digital financial services, deepening financial inclusion, driving innovation and improving customer value.

Those ambitions sound familiar across the fintech industry, but the real test will be whether they translate into a business that can operate efficiently at scale while delivering services Nigerians find useful.

More Than a Change of Title

Abifarin's appointment is therefore best understood as more than a former Flutterwave executive getting another major fintech position.

It represents the movement of an experienced operator into a company attempting to redefine its place within Nigeria's financial services ecosystem. Her career has taken her from consulting and transformation at KPMG, through the operational demands of Flutterwave, into entrepreneurship at Strata Advisory, and now into the chief executive office of MoMo PSB.

What happens next will determine whether that experience can translate into another successful chapter.

For Abifarin, the question is no longer whether she understands how fintech businesses grow. It is whether she can use that understanding to help MoMo PSB navigate its next phase, strengthen its position in Nigeria's digital financial market and turn the enormous promise of financial inclusion into something customers can actually feel.

That is the real story behind her move from Flutterwave to MoMo PSB.