Cellulant, Africa’s leading payment technology company, has appointed Anthony Hernandez as chief operating officer (COO) to lead end-to-end customer experience, from onboarding and transactions to customer growth, alongside advancing operational automation across the business.
Cellulant serves the payment needs of enterprises and global businesses across Africa through a single API that connects to multiple markets and hundreds of payment methods.
As the company continues to scale, its focus is on strengthening the operational backbone required to enable payments with consistency, reliability, and visibility for customers across every market while enabling them to grow.
Commenting on the appointment, Peter O’Toole, chief executive officer of Cellulant, said,
“In payments today, trust is the real currency, and operational excellence is what earns it. As we continue to grow our volumes and support market-leading businesses across Africa and beyond, we are deliberately strengthening our operational foundations. Anthony’s role is to ensure we embed that operational discipline with intention, delivering consistent, high-quality experiences as we deepen our presence across markets and support our customers’ growth.”
Anthony brings over 25 years of global leadership experience across financial services, fintech, and industrial sectors, with a strong track record in building and scaling high-performing operating models in complex, regulated, and fast-growing environments.
Throughout his career, Anthony has held senior leadership roles at GE Capital, Xapo Bank, and Demica (now part of FIS), where he led large-scale digital transformations, regulatory approvals, and built global operating teams managing assets totalling tens of billions of dollars.
Under Hernandez’s leadership, Cellulant will advance an automated, data-driven operational framework to meet growing customer expectations around real-time visibility into fund status and settlements, alongside robust transaction monitoring to support compliance across its markets.
Leveraging platform data, the company will deliver deeper insights to help customers optimise performance, manage risk, and grow.
He will also strengthen compliance and risk frameworks to ensure the highest standards of governance across regulated markets.
“Payment flexibility starts with access to the right options and is grown by how reliably those options work in practice,” said Anthony, COO at Cellulant. “Cellulant has built a powerful payment infrastructure for businesses operating across Africa, and I’m excited to join a team that is at the very heart of Africa’s digital economy. Our focus is now building the operational discipline and systems that ensure customers experience simple, reliable and frictionless payment experiences every time, while giving them the visibility and insight to grow their businesses.”
