CASE STUDY

With more than 100 million transactions to date , Mukuru ’ s core was built providing international money transfers and from this base , it has developed a set of services to address the broader financial needs of its customers . The company now operates in more than 60 countries and across more than 500 remittance corridors .

Mukuru is a business that puts the customer at the centre of everything it does , and for that reason , it serves clients across physical and digital channels , by various payment methods , cash , card , wallet as well as a range of engagement platforms including WhatsApp , USSD , contact centre , App , website , agents and a branch and booth network .

Mukuru has embraced a hybrid working model for many years . Software engineers are employed in Europe , Dubai , Nigeria , Zimbabwe , Kenya and across South Africa . The major change in the working approach after the pandemic is that local staff who engage with remote colleagues have become far more adept at doing so .

Most staff remain supportive of engaging in person at least twice a week if possible , and definitely quarterly at a minimum , to drive effective relationship building and problem solving .

Strategic and operational roles

As Chief Information Officer , Sandy Rheeder , looks after all things IT at Mukuru . This includes typical office IT software and device management for both remote staff and those at the company ’ s various offices and branch locations across Africa .

She oversees product development and focus here is to manage teams that build the technology that underpins the financial services that Mukuru sells to its customers . Sandy heads security and risk management across both the technology products and typical IT operations landscapes .

Her role is to translate business strategy into an executed product and IT strategy . This supports Mukuru ’ s growth ambitions and future proof the organisation in an everchanging and rapidly evolving technology environment .

The challenges of building software in-house through permanent software development teams tend to be typical of high-performing teams . It is about creating great teams that can find long-term career significance at Mukuru , teams that can solve problems well and are exceptionally good at what they do .

Capacity planning for the right mix of development teams as the company grows , avoiding key-man dependencies with IP that is not shared , and training engineers on new frameworks , security protocols , and more , needs to be precisely managed .

As a fintech , Mukuru will generally choose to build in-house , as it allows the company to own its technical architecture , and to pivot team capacity to different projects quickly if needed .

Architecture and application stack

Mukuru is a digital platform that uses the cloud , specifically Amazon Web Services , AWS , for its technology , with a strong DevOps approach for managing its infrastructure . Almost all the key

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