AFIS 2026: African banks must rethink digital transformation, says CR2 CEO.
Speaking on the sidelines of the African Financial Industry Summit 2026 in Luanda, Fintan Byrne, chief executive officer of digital banking platform CR2 (now part of Morocco’s HPS Group), argues that African banks are eroding market share, that consumer expectations are shifting toward instant, cross-border services, and that front-end strategy is proving dangerously inadequate to determine the next decade of continental finance.
For the past decade, commercial banks across Africa have treated the launch of a smartphone application as the definitive proof of digital transformation.
Yet, as agile fintechs erode market share and consumer expectations shift toward instant, cross-border services, that front-end strategy is proving dangerously inadequate.
Inside the meeting rooms of the Africa Financial Industry Summit (AFIS) in Luanda, industry veterans are delivering a blunter assessment: rolling out standalone digital applications without overhauling underlying infrastructure is merely papering over legacy cracks. “Simply launching a mobile application does not solve any problems on its own,” says Fintan Byrne, chief executive officer of CR2. “Innovation for the sake of innovation, or simply introducing another application, does not necessarily deliver value. It requires a comprehensive programme built around the question of what value we are trying to create, what problem we are trying to solve, and what friction we are trying to reduce.” Byrne, an Irish banking software executive with nearly three decades of experience across the global payments landscape—from retail banking and merchant acquiring to senior roles at card schemes like Mastercard—now leads CR2 under the umbrella of Morocco-headquartered multinational HPS Group .
MSEApp News is publishing an original rewrite of this tip for readers, based on reporting associated with TechCabal.