NjiaPay has appointed Mike McLaren as the company’s new Chief Operating Officer (COO).
Mike has extensive experience in fintech and payments in Africa, having most recently served as General Counsel at Stitch, one of South Africa’s leading payment service providers (PSPs), where he played a pivotal role in scaling their legal, regulatory, and compliance functions, and helped close Stitch’s $55m Series B funding round.
Mike joins NjiaPay at a critical growth phase, as the company accelerates its payment management capabilities for South African online businesses and prepares to expand across Africa.
“Bringing Mike on board is a major milestone for NjiaPay. His experience at Stitch, combined with his business, legal and operational acumen, will be invaluable as we scale NjiaPay’s platform and enter new markets.” – Jonatan Allback, CEO & co-founder of NjiaPay.
NjiaPay launched at the beginning of 2025, after closing a $1.3M pre-seed round in January. Since then, the company has been focused on South Africa as a key market, onboarding businesses across industries such as hospitality, e-commerce, telecommunications – and local South African businesses exporting to international markets.
Jonatan continues, “Mike brings a wealth of experience and expertise to our executive team and young company. He understands the complexities of African payments, having seen firsthand the challenges that our clients face in previous roles. I couldn’t be more excited to have him join and help us in our next phase of growth.”
“I’ve seen the payments landscape in Africa evolve rapidly, and what excites me about NjiaPay is the opportunity to tackle the fragmentation and inefficiencies in payments from an entirely new angle.
NjiaPay’s platform gives businesses real control over their payments, something that’s been missing in the market. I’m thrilled to help NjiaPay achieve its vision of truly taking the complexity out of payments for online businesses and adding real value to African companies,” adds McLaren.
NjiaPay’s Payment Management Platform (PMP) helps online businesses of all sizes increase revenues with payment tools previously only available to the largest enterprises in Africa. The PMP is PCI compliant, enabling the secure storage and routing of card details, and reducing the risk of failed transactions when a PSP goes offline.
Furthermore, NjiaPay offers a simpler unified checkout experience with built-in fraud protection, providing additional security and peace of mind for both online businesses and their customers.
