Cross Switch Bets on Local Leadership to Win Africa's Digital Payments Race

Cross Switch, the Cape Town-based payment technology company behind the CS+ platform, has made four senior appointments since January 2026, placing new leadership across its technology function, day-to-day operations, and two of its most commercially significant regional markets. The announcements come as the company deepens its push to expand its payment orchestration infrastructure across Africa's emerging economies.

‍

The most structurally significant appointment is Jacob Yermalitski's promotion from Director of Engineering to Chief Technology Officer. As a co-founder, Yermalitski has been present at every stage of the company's architectural decisions. Moving him into the CTO role is not a lateral hire but a consolidation — the company is aligning its technical direction under someone who built the system, at a moment when that system needs to scale across multiple regulatory environments simultaneously. Cross Switch's CS+ platform connects merchants, payment partners, and service providers to banks, mobile wallets, and local payment rails through a single API integration. Scaling that infrastructure is a function of both software capability and institutional trust, and the promotion signals that the company wants both under one consistent hand.

‍

Jerome Alfred's arrival as Chief Operating Officer adds an external layer to that consolidation. Alfred brings more than fifteen years of fintech and banking experience, including exposure to complex multi-jurisdictional regulatory frameworks. In fintech, operations leadership is often where growth stalls — not because a product fails, but because the back-office infrastructure cannot absorb the compliance, reconciliation, and partner management demands of rapid expansion. Alfred's mandate, based in Cape Town, will be to ensure that the operational side of the business can match what the technology promises.

‍

The regional appointments are where the company's commercial ambition is most visible. Gillian Koinange joins as Head of Business Development for East Africa, based in Nairobi, bringing over two decades of experience in IT, telecommunications, fintech, and SaaS across the continent. East Africa — and Kenya in particular — remains one of the most contested arenas in African fintech, where mobile money incumbents have entrenched network effects and regulatory relationships that new entrants must navigate carefully. Placing a senior commercial leader with existing regional networks in Nairobi is a direct response to that competitive reality.

‍

Nondumiso Siboto's appointment as Head of Operations for South Africa reflects a different challenge. South Africa is Cross Switch's home market and most developed operational base, but it is also a market where customer success and process integrity matter as much as product innovation. Siboto's background in scaling business functions within fintech and SaaS environments positions her as someone who will focus on efficiency and retention rather than pure expansion — a function critical to profitability as the company grows.

‍

What the announcements do not address publicly is the capital and partnership question. Platform scaling at this pace requires sustained investment in infrastructure, regulatory approvals across new markets, and partnership agreements with banks and mobile operators that are often slow to negotiate. The appointment of senior leaders signals readiness; whether that readiness translates into market share will depend on variables that leadership alone cannot control — including currency volatility, data localisation requirements, and the pace at which financial regulators across West, East, and Southern Africa move to accommodate new payment entrants.

‍

What is clear is that Cross Switch is moving from startup mode into institutional mode. The company is investing in leadership at the same cadence as it is investing in platform capability. In a market where several payment infrastructure plays have stalled not from lack of technology but from lack of organisational depth, that sequencing matters. The test now is execution — and whether four new appointments are enough to carry a continental payments play past the point where most of its peers have historically lost momentum.