Fintech firms are competing for the same small pool of specialised skills, from AI-native developers, to staff who understand high-speed payment systems.
Lesaka says it has little trouble attracting scarce fintech skills, while Altron FinTech has long timelines to fill a specialised vacancy. “We’ve been able to attract amazing, amazing talent,” says Lesaka Southern Africa CEO Lincoln Mali.
Altron FinTech MD Johan Gellatly says a shortage of specialised skills needed to build and run payment systems delays new appointments.
“Say one of our senior people has left the organisation, and we can’t recruit internally; it takes us about six months to find that person that could fit our culture and our company,” says Gellatly.
Going fishing
Lesaka attracts talent “from banks, talent from fintechs, talent from retailers and telcos”, with its consumer, payments, cards and enterprise businesses giving it a wider pool from which to recruit, says Mali.
The dual-listed fintech firm provides financial services, software and other business services to Southern Africa’s underserviced market.
Mali says Lesaka has been “blessed over the last four or five years that we’ve been able to build on” the skills it already had as a result of the formation of what was Net 1 in 2022. Among the skills Lesaka is seeking are data analytics, artificial intelligence-native software developers, cyber security and sales, while it is also focusing on leadership.
Pnet’s latest Job Market Trends Report, released in August, shows men still account for 67% of professionals listing AI skills on their CVs, compared with 32% for women. Its analysis of 1.5 million jobseeker profiles shows the proportion of women listing AI skills has increased from 25% to 32% over the past three years.
“AI capabilities are quickly becoming a core workplace competency rather than a specialist technical skill,” says Pnet.
The pocketbook
Currently, says Gellatly, banks are “poaching” staff given that they are also competing among themselves for these skills. “And we can’t pay salaries that the banks pay.”
Altron FinTech provides technology platforms for the payments and microfinance sectors, including switching services connecting retailers to banks for real-time card transactions. It also provides technology enabling registered credit providers to digitally extend, disburse and collect credit.
“I’ve got about 32 to 35 developers, and this is what they do day in and day out; to make sure our platforms run as resiliently as they do today,” says Gellatly.
A payment transaction typically takes around three seconds, during which about 17 different transactions need to take place, says Gellatly. “And that domain knowledge is extremely scarce, and it’s sought-after.”
Altron FinTech outsources some development it does not need to develop in-house. For example, Gellatly says it does not see “mobile app development as a mission-critical skill that we have to have as an organisation”.
DIY talent
Altron FinTech’s response is to “onboard, grow and upskill” its people, although this makes them “very mobile” and “very lucrative”, says Gellatly. “I’ve made peace with that. We just fill our pipe as full as we can with as many people as learners, and onboard, and skill them up, and get them up and running,” he says.
Altron FinTech can appoint 10 to 15 learners from its learnership academy, depending on their fit, says Gellatly. Altron’s 25-year-old studentship programme hosted 220 students pursuing NQF certifications in FY26, with 28 moving into permanent roles.
Lesaka is also building its own pipeline. “The fight for talent and skill is huge,” says Mali, pointing to its two-year-old graduate programme.
“It wasn’t easy because we were not known, but we decided to do things radically by inviting the top 1% of kids in the STEM languages to come and have lunch and dinner with us,” Mali says. “Those kids came in good numbers and were able to attract amazing talent.”
Lesaka also deliberately positions recruits as part of a select group. “Because if we don’t… reward excellence, we’ll just inherit mediocrity,” says Mali. More broadly, he says Lesaka wants “people with a sense of purpose” across its businesses.
“Young kids today are really big on purpose. They live intentionally,” says Mali. “So, you have to do a lot of things very differently when you’re trying to attract talent.”
“Let’s control what we can control,” says Gellatly. “Let’s get new people into our business and get them equipped for the future.”
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