Stanbic’s Zest Payment hires Kemi Okusanya from Access’s Hydrogen as CEO
Stanbic IBTC has hired the CEO of Access Bank’s fintech subsidiary to lead its fintech arm, Zest Payments.
Stanbic IBTC has hired a new CEO for its fintech arm, Zest. Thereby, replacing the founding CEO, Dr Stanley Jacob, who moved on to become the Group Innovation Officer at Meristem Nigeria, after nearly four years.
Zest Payments Limited, formerly Stanbic IBTC Financial Services, is the fintech subsidiary of Stanbic IBTC Holdings Plc, the Nigerian arm of Standard Bank Group.
The new CEO of Zest is Kemi Okusanya, the former CEO of Hydrogen Payment Services Company Limited, an Access Corporation company, the owner of Access Bank Plc. Okusanya was a founding team member of Hydrogen and served in the role for four years.
Kemi Okusanya’s impressive track record as a business executive
Kemi Okusanya is a business manager with over 18 years of experience. Her career spans time at Visa, MoneyGram International, Zenith Bank and ExxonMobil.
Under her leadership at Hydrogen, the fintech posted rapid growth in profitability and revenue. In 2024, Hydrogen reported a profit of ₦1.8 billion, a tenfold increase from ₦161 million in 2023, while operating income surged 400% to ₦10 billion. Momentum continued into the first half of 2025, with profit rising 306% to ₦966 million ($664,928), driven by a 197.83% jump in transaction volume to ₦41.1 trillion.
Operating income reached ₦4.19 billion during that period. This performance places Hydrogen as the second most profitable bank-backed digital payments company in Nigeria, trailing only GTCO’s HabariPay and ahead of Stanbic IBTC’s Zest.
Commercial banks and the race to build a fintech subsidiary
At least three Nigerian commercial bank holding companies, GTCO, Access and Stanbic, spun up fintech subsidiaries, Squad, Hydrogen, and Zest, respectively, to compete in the rapidly digitising financial services sector, which boasts major players like Moniepoint, OPay, and Kuda.
In January 2025, Stanbic IBTC injected ₦4 billion ($2.48 million), the equivalent of a seed round, into its subsidiary, Zest, to strengthen its position against those established rivals.
However, Zest doesn’t enjoy the same advantages as HabariPay, which powers its parent’s significant VAS business, retailing airtime and other bill payments, at zero acquisition cost.
So, while Zest revenue jumped to ₦874 million in the first half of 2025, the company’s losses widened and resulted in a net loss of ₦389 million for the period.
The company offers businesses a robust suite of products to start and grow their businesses online. Zest customers can set up an online store with payment links or create invoices, and collect payments via bank transfers to virtual accounts, cards, or USSD.
What happens now at Zest Payments
The incoming executive will be tasked with leading Zest Payments into its next phase of growth. Based on her transformative track record at Hydrogen, Okusanya will be expected to drive hypergrowth in transaction volume at Zest. She can leverage her experience to onboard thousands of merchants quickly. At Hydrogen, she onboarded over 20,000 merchants in a similar timeframe. That same playbook would position Zest to compete directly with volume leaders like Moniepoint and OPay.
She will also need to shift Zest from revenue growth to profitable scale. The company recently posted a profit in late 2025, but it has historically struggled with high operating costs relative to income. Okusanya has a proven ability to build infrastructure-led profitability. She will likely optimise Zest’s cost-to-income ratio by focusing on high-margin infrastructure services such as switching and processing, rather than solely on front-end consumer apps.
In addition, Okusanya championed Hydrogen as an orchestrator that integrates deeply with bank systems and third-party fintechs. At Zest, she is expected to accelerate the rollout of robust APIs so Stanbic IBTC’s banking services can be embedded inside other platforms.
Her experience building partnerships with major fintechs like Flutterwave and Paystack during her time at Visa and Hydrogen will be critical. That experience can transform Zest from a standalone subsidiary into the central hub for Stanbic IBTC Group’s digital ecosystem.
