Barry Levett is a fintech entrepreneur focused on building secure, scalable infrastructure that enables mobile devices to become trusted endpoints for commerce. As founder and Group CEO of SmartPesa, he led the expansion of its payment and agency banking solutions across 11 countries. Following the merger with Mypinpad in 2022, Barry was appointed CEO, bringing a unified strategic vision to the combined company.
Barry has over 25 years of experience across technology, capital markets, and global industry — including senior roles at Merrill Lynch, Shell, and BHP Billiton in both the UK and Singapore. A Chartered Accountant (SA), CFA Charterholder, and IMD MBA graduate, he combines financial depth with technical execution.
Under Barry’s leadership, Mypinpad is building secure mobile-to-backend channels that eliminate the need for specialist hardware — lowering cost, expanding reach, and unlocking new use cases beyond payments. His vision is grounded in the belief that digital infrastructure should increase freedom, not friction — enabling people and businesses to transact more securely, more simply, and on their own terms.
Category: Leader
Richard Forlee
Richard has over 30 years of experience with the Investec Group serving at director level in SA, UK and HK. In this time Richard led and developed numerous global new business units spanning specialised finance, treasury, trading and private equity investment.
A proven leader in building new enterprises, he now brings that leadership and experience to delivering Mypinpad’s vision and scaling the business globally.
Hervé Alfieri
With 25 years of executive experience, Hervé joins us most recently from Visa where he pioneered the deployment of next-generation payment solutions in Asia-Pacific, leveraging mobile and contactless technologies.
Born in France, he moved to Asia in 2002 where he co-founded five payments and eCommerce companies. Combining technical expertise with business acumen, his career is focused on accelerating the adoption of Fintech solutions for the banked, underbanked and unbanked populations.
Wayne Preston
Former Accenture consultant and Investec banking executive with over 30 years of knowledge in SA and UK Private Banking markets. Wayne has led large-scale technology operations for Investec and established their card payments and banking business in South Africa and the UK.
A proven leader with core skills in retail banking, product innovation, operations, marketing and technology platforms, he has also held many executive roles and was on the board of Visa South Africa.
David Ackerman
An FCCA Qualified Accountant with over 15 years’ experience in Finance across a variety of sectors including financial services, professional services and manufacturing.
David has a track record of developing established and startup businesses through periods of acquisition and high growth. David joined the Licentia Group in 2019 and now leads the finance function.
Sally Withers
Sally has over 25 years’ experience of working in HR across multiple sectors including Telecoms and Finance.
As a graduate in Psychology and an Executive Coach, Sally has worked with SMEs and multinational corporations. She brings a wealth of experience in partnering senior leaders and in managing projects across all organisational requirements.
Neal Hindocha
With over 20 years in IT security and compliance, Neal joined Mypinpad in 2018 to manage the security and compliance functions. Prior to joining Mypinpad, Neal was managing FortConsult’s (part of NCC Group) business in Sweden and Norway.
Neal has a long history of working as a consultant for companies such as Trustwave and Verizon Business, where he had a particular focus on the finance sector.
Ashley Head
Ashley offers a wealth of corporate banking and entrepreneurial experience. His corporate banking positions have included Senior Vice President at Chase Manhattan Bank, Senior Vice President at Mastercard International, and responsibility for operations and systems at The National Commercial Bank, Saudi Arabia.
Since 2000, Ashley built and sold a number of companies including: NETGIRO, UCash, Virtual Fusion and Datacash.
Anton Gaylard
Anton is the co-founder and Chief Exponential Officer at Crossfin. He has more than 28 years of technology, retail, eCommerce and M&A experience in entrepreneurial and corporate entities with a specific focus on technology, payments, strategy and operations. His experience enables him to provide high quality strategic and operational solutions to both business development and value creation.