GIM-UEMOA Appoints Ahmed Al Moustapha Cissé as Deputy CEO: A Strong Signal in the Payments Battle

The appointment of Ahmed Al Moustapha Cissé as Deputy Chief Executive Officer (DCEO) of GIM-UEMOA is not just another human resources announcement. It comes at a decisive moment for the WAEMU/UEMOA zone, which is currently playing out—at an accelerated pace strategic contest: who will control tomorrow’s digital payments infrastructure? Regional bank-led schemes, or ecosystems driven by platforms, fintechs, and mobile money operators?

GIM-UEMOA is far from a neutral player in this equation. Created in 2003 by the BCEAO and regional banks, the institution was specifically designed to implement a regional interbank card and electronic payment system, providing a shared interoperability backbone across the Union. In its own institutional presentation, GIM-UEMOA positions itself at the heart of the UEMOA banking community’s payment activities, with core responsibilities related to continuity, governance, and service delivery.

In this context, appointing a Deputy CEO is a strategic decision. It means choosing a leadership profile capable of steering the organization amid rising operational risks—cyber fraud, 24/7 availability requirements, regulatory compliance—while also responding to competitive pressure driven by mobile usage, new payment experiences, and ever-faster execution cycles.

According to available information, Ahmed Al Moustapha Cissé holds a degree in Computer Science from Gaston Berger University in Saint-Louis, Senegal. More importantly, his career reflects a strong “large-scale systems” trajectory. He spent more than two decades at the BCEAO, successively serving as software designer-developer, Head of IT Development Services, and later Deputy Director of Information Systems. In these roles, he is reported to have contributed to the design and management of structuring projects covering payment systems, mission-critical business applications, information systems security, and the modernization of technological architectures.

Before joining the Central Bank, his profile also includes more operational, field-level experience: systems and network administrator at Advanced Network Technologies (ANTG), followed by Head of Software Programming at ADBanking – Aquadev West Africa. According to his LinkedIn profile, he also has advanced expertise in functional specifications for instant payment systems and reportedly acted as a designer of an instant payment platform at the BCEAO.

This detail carries particular weight given that the BCEAO has recently reached a major milestone with the launch of the Interoperable Instant Payment System Platform (PI-SPI), officially scheduled to go live on 30 September 2025. In a region where payments are already experienced in real time through mobile money—but where interbank systems have historically been slower—instantaneity is becoming a standard, not an option.

This is where the appointment becomes almost divisive. GIM-UEMOA is strengthening itself with a “BCEAO / critical infrastructure” profile at a time when part of the market might have expected more product-oriented leadership, focused on growth, user experience, and rapid integrations. Symbolically at least, the Union appears to be leaning toward control, security, and robustness.

This choice can be read as a response to a central risk: payments and interoperability have become systemic infrastructures. A major incident—whether a breakdown, cyberattack, or large-scale fraud—no longer affects a single bank; it spreads across the network. From this perspective, the expertise of an executive trained within the technological core of a central bank brings immediate value: change governance, architecture discipline, security standards, high availability requirements, and execution rigor.

However, another, more unsettling interpretation is equally plausible. By consistently favoring “systems” profiles, regional payment governance may risk chasing the market rather than anticipating it. Because the battle is not purely technical—it is also commercial and usage-driven. Customers adopt what is simple, instant, affordable, and omnichannel. On that front, agile players are moving fast.

The new Deputy CEO’s challenge therefore lies at the intersection of two worlds: preserving a regional infrastructure that reassures banks and regulators, while ensuring that interbank payments do not become an “invisible backbone”, bypassed in everyday usage by alternative rails. For GIM-UEMOA, the challenge is to remain the arena where large-scale interoperability is shaped, not merely a back-office utility.

If Ahmed Al Moustapha Cissé has indeed been deeply involved in instant payment initiatives and architectural modernization projects at the BCEAO, his appointment can also be interpreted as an attempt to reconcile speed and control—to make interbank systems as fluid as digital payment usage, without compromising security.

Ultimately, this appointment raises a simple but structuring question for the UEMOA region: will the next phase of payments be governed like a public infrastructure—focused on security, continuity, and interoperability—or like a market, driven by experience, expansion, and speed? By its very nature, GIM-UEMOA is expected to deliver on both fronts. And the new Deputy CEO will be judged on his ability to walk that fine line.