Mitchell Elegbe

Mitchell Elegbe is one of the foundational figures in modern African payments. He founded Interswitch in 2002 and helped build the switching infrastructure that enabled electronic transactions to scale across Nigeria, while later creating Verve, an indigenous card scheme with reach beyond its home market. Elegbe's significance is partly what he has resisted: chasing every fintech fashion cycle. Instead, he spent decades building durable infrastructure beneath the financial system. That institutional memory matters as Africa enters a new era of interoperability and digital money. Elegbe belongs on the Borderless 100 because today's cross-border ambitions rest on infrastructure builders like him.