Antonia Esser

Speaker Bio

Antonia is a Principal at Cenfri, a not-for-profit development consultancy in South Africa. Her main areas of research include domestic and cross-border instant and inclusive retail payment systems and governance, remittances regulation and infrastructure, as well as regulation for innovation. She is particularly interested in addressing financial access and usage challenges related to remittances and exploring avenues for improvement. Antonia has led the development of a five-year regional East African Community (EAC) payment system masterplan as well as an EAC regional mobile money regulatory framework. Antonia is currently assessing regulatory pathways to inclusive mobile money and is drafting a new national payments strategy for the Central Bank of Lesotho.