Safaricom’s director of financial services Ronald Webb is set to leave the company after a year in charge of its m-Pesa platform, Business Daily Africa reported.

Citing an internal memo from CEO Bob Collymore, the news website said Webb (pictured) was leaving the firm to return to the UK for family reasons. The company has reportedly appointed head of m-Pesa product development Brian Wamatu to replace Webb on an interim basis – a role he also briefly filled when Betty Mwangi left the role in 2016.

Webb’s departure comes as Safaricom makes a number of changes and upgrades to the platform and as the operator’s executives look at ways to export its version of mobile money to other countries.

In the last three months, the company launched m-Pesa payment devices, introduced new APIs to ease integration issues for suppliers and rolled-out more stringent security measures for merchants.

The service is an important part of the operator’s customer proposition and is behind only voice in terms of revenue generation.

At the company’s last annual results – for the year to the end of March – it accounted for 27 per cent of company revenue and boasted a user base of 26.6 million.