Airtel Money: Digital Payments Transformation
This case study documents how Airtel Money redesigned its digital delivery and operating model to scale compliant digital payments across fourteen African markets — transforming fragmented local execution into a coordinated, value-stream-aligned delivery engine.
Strategic Pressure
Airtel Money operates as a pan-African digital payments platform, serving millions of customers across multiple OpCos, each operating within distinct regulatory, commercial, and operational constraints.
By 2018, the organisation faced increasing pressure to:
- Accelerate digital payments innovation across markets
- Reduce duplication and inconsistency between OpCos
- Modernise legacy platforms while maintaining regulatory compliance
- Compete with faster-moving fintech and mobile money providers
The challenge was not a lack of demand or investment. It was how change flowed through the organisation.
Problem
Delivery was constrained by local optimisation at the expense of system-wide outcomes.
Key issues included:
- Fragmented delivery teams operating independently within OpCos
- Inconsistent tooling, governance, and ways of working
- Project-centric funding and prioritisation limiting strategic alignment
- Excessive handoffs across commercial, technology, and operations
- Extended time-to-market, often approaching 12 months for cross-market initiatives
These constraints made scaling innovation across markets slow, expensive, and risky.
This was not a tooling problem. It was an operating model problem.
My Accountability
I was accountable for designing and enabling a scalable delivery model that could operate across multiple markets while respecting regulatory and organisational realities.
My accountability included:
- Diagnosing systemic delivery constraints across OpCos
- Defining a value-stream-aligned operating model for Digital Payments
- Designing and launching a Digital Payments Agile Release Train (ART)
- Introducing Lean Portfolio Management to align strategy, funding, and execution
- Supporting leadership alignment across technology, commercial, HR, finance, and compliance
- Enabling consistent tooling and reporting to support transparency and predictability
The focus was on structural alignment, not local optimisation.
Intervention
Where accountability defined what needed to change, the intervention focused on how Airtel Money would deliver change at scale.
The transformation was intentionally incremental but structural.
Operating Model Redesign
Delivery was reorganised around the Digital Payments value stream, shifting from functionally-aligned projects to long-lived, outcome-owned teams capable of delivering end-to-end value.
Lean Portfolio Management
Introduced to align initiatives to strategic themes, improve prioritisation across OpCo demands, and provide financial transparency. Created a direct link between strategy and execution.
ART Design & Enablement
Launched a Digital Payments ART integrating Product, Architecture, Delivery, People Ops, Compliance, and Security for coordinated planning and predictable execution.
Tooling as an Enabler
Jira Cloud and supporting tools were configured to support Portfolio, ART, and Team-level execution with standardised backlog hierarchy and flow across markets.
Capability & Leadership
Embedded Agile capability through leadership coaching, role clarity across functions, and training aligned to the operating model to ensure sustainable internal capability.
Outcomes
- Digital Payments ART launched across 14 African markets.
- Time-to-market reduced from ~12 months to ~10 weeks.
- Improved alignment between strategy, funding, and delivery.
- Reduced duplication and rework across OpCos.
- Increased predictability for cross-market initiatives.
Most importantly, Airtel Money gained the ability to scale innovation without scaling complexity.
Supporting Material
Supporting artefacts from the engagement included:
- Digital Payments value stream maps
- Target operating model and ART design
- Lean Portfolio Management structure and cadence
- Governance, metrics, and reporting framework
- Jira Cloud configuration aligned to scaled execution
These artefacts informed subsequent scaling beyond the initial case study.