Mrs Onajite Regha
Mrs Onajite Regha is the Chief Executive Officer/Executive Secretary of the Electronics Payment Providers Association of Nigeria and the initiator of the association which she co-founded with top industry leaders. She has a degree in Mass Communication, a certificate in Projects Management and is an Extra Value Certified Professional by Havard Associates.
She started her career with Alau Mariana, an oil service firm, before she proceeded to Citibank where she spent over three years in the Operations Department and was in charge of the front office for the electronic card purse of the bank. Specifically, she managed the customer service point of the bank’s e-purse product.
Thereafter, Regha worked as a Partner in Intermarc, an electronic payment consulting firm. Here she held a lot of responsibilities which included: Conference Director for the biggest cards conference in Africa, Card Expo West Africa, Editor-in-Chief for Cards Technology Africa, the only e-payment magazine in the sub-region, and was in charge of EPTG, the training arm of the consulting firm, which held several trainings in and out of Africa. In her time, she introduced the Card East Africa Expo in Kenya, an annual conference for the collective representative of the East Africa region.
Driven by a bigger vision, Onajite left Intermarc to establish Nexsmart Technology Limited, a training and consulting firm in August 2007, as she saw the need to fill the vacuum in payment skills acquisition and development in the country. Through this medium she realized that there was a greater need for the companies in e-payment to come together and meet on a common ground. She liaised with all the important persons in the industry who bought into this vision and the E-Payment Providers Association of Nigeria was born in September, 2009. Today E-PPAN, under Regha’s leadership has established itself as a leading player in the financial industry, contributing to new policy developments, innovations and growth of the e-payment industry. She sits on the board of payment companies, and several industry committees.
Onajite Regha has received numerous acknowledgements and awards for her contribution to the electronic payment growth in Nigeria and in the sub-region. In 2010 the Financial Technology Magazine listed her as one of the top 20 African women in Financial Service Technology. Recently, The Guardian Newspaper honoured her as one of the Pillars of Financial Technology Service Providers in Nigeria. She won the PSR Woman of Merit Gold Award for her contribution to the development Electronic Payment Systems and Technology in Nigeria. She contributes to several publications, has authored and co-authored several policy briefs, focus notes, white papers, e.t.c. and has travelled wide in pursuit of advancing the electronic payment business in Africa. Onajite is widely consulted on issues of e-payment in Nigeria and Africa.
She is happily married woman with three lovely kids.