Emerging Markets Payments (EMP), a leading pan-African and Middle Eastern payments firm has appointed Murat Ozulku as CEO of its Bank Processing Division, replacing Hoda Shoukry who has retired after an illustrious career.
Murat has had a stellar career at Citibank covering two decades and has worked in Europe, the Middle East and Africa in a variety of senior roles. Most recently, while based in Nairobi, Murat led Citi’s Transactional Banking business across East Africa, providing products and services to Financial Institution, Corporate and Public Sector clients. He has extensive experience of building and operating payments platforms and a deep familiarity with the wider region.”
As CEO EMP, Murat will be responsible for all of EMP’s Bank Processing operations which include payments platforms in Egypt, Jordan and Nigeria, as well as sales and service operations in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana and UAE.
Paul Edwards, Executive Chairman of EMP, stated “EMP is delighted to welcome Murat Ozulku as the new CEO of Bank Processing.”
He also paid tribute to Hoda Shoukry, who is retiring as CEO of EMP’s Bank Processing Division, having been with the company since its inception, first as a Director and then as the Chief Executive.
“Hoda led the business as it grew rapidly and established its reputation for world-class payments services to banks across Africa and the Middle East. Her fierce determination and passion for the business helped overcome many challenges over the years. She will be greatly missed by staff and clients alike”, said Edwards.
EMP has a Processing Division for outsourced payments solutions such as card procurement and personalisation and card hosting through to ATM and POS driving, mobile payments and advisory services to 130 banks in 35 countries. The Group hosts over 11 million accounts and processes more than 100 million transactions per annum.
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According to the firm, the barriers of EMV migration are technology, time and cost. To take away these barriers EMP will be offering the Kenyan Banks an extremely attractive proposal to migrate and process for any interested Bank on the very lastest technology. The proposal includes free migration from Magnetic Stripe Cards to EMV Chip, and if the bank is ready a commitment to meet the EMV deadline. EMP has 130 banks across africa and has signed 2 banks in Kenya now. Murat will help drive its uptake in Kenya.
“I am very excited to be joining EMP and look forward to building on the excellent platform that Hoda Shoukry has developed. The Middle East and Africa region has the youngest age profile in the world and is becoming increasingly tech savvy. There is huge demand for access to financial services. Growth in the payments sector will be sustained at very high rates for at least the next 5 to 10 years and I am determined that EMP will remain the leading, the most dynamic and the most trusted payments processor and solutions provider in the region”, said Murat Ozulku.
