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Malcolm Govender

@malcolmgovender

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AI leader at MTN Group Fintech who established its AI Centre of Excellence and built fintech products end to end.

South Africa

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At MTN Group Fintech, I lead Group AI strategy and governance while staying hands-on with backends, APIs, automation and DevOps. I established the Group AI Centre of Excellence, authored the Board-approved AI policy, and launched Phase 1 of an AI Lab sandbox.

I led NextGen, MTN's MoMo digital transformation across 13 markets, and helped modernise its digital architecture and customer and merchant journeys. I also launched virtual and physical card issuance, with card transactions up 35%.

Through Moove Digital, my independent studio, I design, build and commercialise AI and fintech products end to end. These include Zara AI for conversational commerce, PayGuard for fraud decisioning, and Swifter for cross-border settlement.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Head of AI & Automation

Current

MTN Group Fintech

Jan 2026 - Present (10 months)

Established the Group AI Centre of Excellence, defining the AI operating model and use-case pipeline. Authored the Board-approved Group AI policy and leads AI prioritization, budget, and technical squads.

AI Strategy AI Governance Responsible AI Backend Development APIs Automation DevOps Model Benchmarking

Current

Founder

Current

Moove Digital

Jan 2023 - Present (3 years 10 months)

Independent studio designing, building, and commercializing AI and fintech products end to end, including Zara AI, PayGuard, Swifter, and Protea LLM.

AI Fintech Product Development Fullstack Development Architecture Commercialization

Head of Product – Fintech Digital Channels

MTN Group Fintech

Sep 2023 - Dec 2025 (2 years 3 months)

Led NextGen, MTN's flagship MoMo digital transformation across 13 markets, serving 85M+ users and 5.5 trillion in transaction value. Modernized digital architecture, launched card issuance, and implemented acquiring solutions.

Product Strategy Digital Banking Mobile Money Card Issuance Acquiring Systems PCI DSS Agile Roadmapping

Founding Product Owner & B2B Lead – Avo Super App

Nedbank

Dec 2020 - Aug 2023 (2 years 8 months)

Founding team member who set B2B strategy, growing Avo to 2M customers and 25,000 businesses. Built merchant platform, embedded ML risk models, and architected an omnichannel payment gateway.

Product Management B2B Strategy Merchant Platform ML Risk Models Payment Gateways Omnichannel Working Capital Financing

Digital Commercial Manager

Blue Label Telecoms

Jan 2019 - Feb 2020 (1 year 1 month)

Owned the formal and informal merchant strategy and roadmap for South Africa. Shaped digital payments and value-added services propositions and drove commercial planning.

Merchant Strategy Digital Payments Value added Services Commercial Planning

Senior Product Manager – Payment Platforms

Blue Label Telecoms

Aug 2017 - Dec 2019 (2 years 4 months)

Led product strategy and roadmap for digital payments and value-added services. Designed open developer payment APIs and high-throughput, PCI DSS-compliant transaction processing, and introduced agile/Scrum.

Product Strategy Payment APIs PCI DSS Transaction Processing Agile Scrum

Product Owner – Rest of Africa Digital Banking

Nedbank

May 2015 - Jun 2017 (2 years 1 month)

Set digital banking strategy across 8 African subsidiaries. Launched mobile apps and USSD services reaching 1M+ active digital customers and delivered a regional payment gateway processing $100M+ a month.

Digital Banking Mobile Apps USSD Payment Gateways Real Time Clearing Card Acquiring

Senior Product Manager – Digital Banking

Nedbank

Jan 2012 - Dec 2015 (3 years 11 months)

Owned digital channel profitability, delivering 25%+ year-on-year growth. Led a team of 8 product managers and deployed predictive analytics that reduced customer churn by 20%.

Product Management Digital Channels Profitability Predictive Analytics Team Leadership