In African culture, tributes often tend to exaggerate the virtues of the deceased while glossing over their shortcomings.
But in the case of Eva Ngigi-Sarwari, Equity Group’s director for payments and international banking who died last week, the outpouring of tributes paints a portrait of a fallen giant in the payments industry.
The breadth of the tributes, coming from across the financial sector, reflects her 20-year career spanning banks and payment service providers in the region.
She spent the first 15 years of her career in banking before joining Visa’s Kenyan operations, where she worked for five years. She then returned to her first love – banking – this time taking up a more senior role at Equity Group.
With virtual banks preparing for a battle royale with established payment service providers such as Safaricom’s M-Pesa, for a share of the billions flowing through the sector, players are pulling out all the stops.
Banks have been hiring experienced talent from across the financial services industry or making acquisitions to strengthen their positions in the payments market.
For Equity Group, the push began in January 2025, when it hired Ngigi-Sarwari from Visa, where she had spent more than four years as country manager for Kenya, South Sudan and Somalia.
Her death, therefore, not only leaves the James Mwangi-led bank with the headache of filling the void she has left, but also robs the country of one of its leading minds in a sector that has helped establish Kenya as a fintech hub.
Her death cuts short a career spanning more than two decades in banking, transaction services and digital payments, at a time when financial institutions are competing to make money move faster and more securely across increasingly connected markets.
For those who worked around her, the loss extends beyond a senior executive’s departure.
Robert Ochieng, chief executive and co-founder of Abojani Investment, knew Ngigi-Sarwari through her work in the industry, particularly in innovation and financial education.
‘Eva had extraordinary and exemplary contributions at the intersection of the financial services industry and technology. She was an inspiration to many professionals navigating their careers and a fervent champion of innovation and financial education,’ said Mr Ochieng.
‘She was a trailblazer who achieved a lot within a short time and built a portfolio career across business, financial services, innovation and technology. An avid reader, too. Her ticket symbols were compassion and humility,’ he added.
Ngigi-Sarwari began her banking career doing work that was far removed from the digital financial services she would eventually help shape – printing customer statements, folding them, placing them in envelopes and distributing them.
It was a modest starting point for a woman who would rise through some of the region’s biggest financial institutions, lead Visa’s operations in three African markets and, in the final months of her career, head Equity Group’s digital payments subsidiary.
Rather than treating the assignment as a minor task, she tried to make the process more efficient, setting herself a target of serving clients within a minute.
‘Looking back, it was a good place to start,’ she said in a later account of the experience.
After starting at Co-operative Bank of Kenya in 2005, she moved through customer-facing and sales roles before joining CfC Stanbic Holdings, where she worked in transaction products and services. In 2012, she joined Standard Chartered Bank Kenya, where she spent more than seven years and rose to become head of transaction banking in the commercial banking division.
Her work involved helping businesses manage payments and other financial operations. She would later move to SC Ventures, Standard Chartered’s innovation and venture-building arm, in January 2020, before joining Visa later that year.
At Visa, she became country manager for Kenya, with responsibility extending to South Sudan and Somalia, in a role that placed her at the intersection of a global payments network and local markets where businesses and consumers were adopting new ways to pay.
Ngigi-Sarwari took up the Visa role during the Covid-19 pandemic, when restrictions on movement accelerated the importance of digital channels for businesses and consumers.
In a past interview with this publication, she pointed to the role payment platforms played in keeping trade going during lockdowns: ‘Part of my job at Visa was to promote consumer awareness on the security, safety and reliability of digital payments.’
Her subsequent work at Visa included partnerships intended to expand digital payment options for merchants.
One example was Visa’s partnership with Absa Kenya to launch Mobi Tap, which allowed small businesses to accept card payments using an Android smartphone or tablet as a point-of-sale device. The broader significance of her work lay in connecting technology with the commercial realities of the people expected to use it.
Ngigi-Sarwari, Equity Group’s director for payments and international banking, died on October 20, while on a business trip to China.
In January 2025, Ngigi-Sarwari joined Equity Group as group director for payments and international banking before becoming managing director of Finserve Africa, Equity’s digital financial services subsidiary, in April 2026.
The appointments brought her experience in transaction banking, international payments and global payment networks into a group building its payments business across African markets. Her remit at Equity covered payments strategy and international banking, including solutions for corporate and institutional customers.
Finserve, meanwhile, sits within the group’s digital financial services operations, making her latest role a continuation of the work that had defined much of her career. The combination of responsibilities placed her at a significant point in the relationship between banking and technology, as the systems that move money became increasingly central to how banks serve customers.
Her career also reflected a willingness to keep learning. She earned a Bachelor of Business Management from Moi University in 2004 and an MBA from the University of Nairobi in 2010. She later completed the Oxford Fintech Programme at Saïd Business School in 2019 and a postgraduate diploma in digital business in 2020.
The qualifications complemented the experience she was gaining in the industry, as financial services became more dependent on digital infrastructure, customer data and partnerships between banks and technology providers.
In the past Business Daily interview, Ngigi-Sarwari described herself as a private person who pushed through what she believed in with passion: ‘I push through what I believe in with a lot of passion. I’m also a harsh critic. I always want to be better than the last conversation,’ she said at the time.
She further spoke of struggling with impostor syndrome and learning to become more comfortable in senior leadership, despite reaching a position many professionals aspire to.
The impact of her death will be felt first by her family, colleagues and friends. For Kenya’s financial technology sector, it also removes a leader whose experience crossed traditional banking, transaction services, venture building and digital payments.
Her own career offered a lesson in professional growth; starting with routine work, learning the business, taking on unfamiliar challenges and continuing to study as the industry changed. In the past interview, she said she wanted to keep improving and to make a difference through her work.
At 45, that journey has ended far earlier than expected. The full measure of what the sector has lost will be seen not only in the offices and businesses she led, but also in the ideas, partnerships and people she might have helped develop.