Recently appointed CEO of MVola, Alexandre Castel outlines his priorities and the company's ambitions. Placing customers at the heart of business operations and strengthening financial inclusion are key focuses. Interview.

How would you describe yourself in a few words?
My name is Alexandre Castel, I'm 40 years old, and for over fifteen years my career has been focused on Africa. I worked nearly ten years in West Africa and have been based in Madagascar for six years.

My experience is mainly linked to what I call essential services: access to energy, telecommunications, and basic services. Joining the financial sector is therefore a natural continuation. Financial inclusion is equally essential to economic and human development.

You come from the energy sector. How is your transition to the financial sector going?
These are actually quite similar fields because they both serve the population directly. Electricity and financial services both meet essential needs.

In both cases, the relationship is built first and foremost on trust. MVola customers entrust us with their money and rely on us to conduct their transactions reliably and securely. These activities also depend on infrastructure that must remain available 24/7 in heavily regulated environments.

But the most important common ground remains customer satisfaction: understanding their needs, listening to them, and providing concrete solutions. From that perspective, I'm not really out of my depth.

Recently, MVola users have experienced technical problems. Some customers reported missing money from their accounts or difficulty accessing the service. How do you plan to turn things around?
First, we need to be clear on one point: money doesn't disappear from accounts and MVola doesn't steal customer money. However, we must acknowledge that these incidents have caused legitimate concern. Technical problems affected service access and, in some cases, balance displays. The situations reported to us have since been resolved.

We know these difficulties were damaging and complicated our customers' daily lives. We are sincerely sorry. Our responsibility now is to be more responsive, better anticipate risks, and do everything possible to prevent such incidents from happening again.

MVola has existed for sixteen years and has experienced considerable growth. In a way, the company was a victim of its own success. To use a simple analogy, MVola had an engine suited to a small car when it launched. Over the years, the car became a truck. The engine was regularly improved, but it became necessary to replace it to sustainably support our growth.

What happened then?
In May, we conducted a technology migration. To return to the analogy, we changed the engine. We moved to more powerful infrastructure capable of supporting our growth, accommodating more customers, and handling a larger volume of transactions.

The difficulties experienced in May and June occurred as a result of this migration. Today, that phase is behind us. The platform is now stabilized, modernized, and more robust. Incidents have decreased significantly, although we still have several improvements to implement.

What still needs to be done?
On the technical side, we must continue modernizing the platform, strengthen its reliability and security, and intensify efforts against fraud and money laundering. These are essential issues for our customers and regulatory authorities.

On customer relations, we have listened carefully to user feedback. This led us to review how we manage this relationship. We have therefore launched a priority initiative to be more responsive in handling complaints, with faster, clearer, and more effective responses. This ambition also involves evolving our organization to provide support that meets expectations.

When you were appointed, what objectives did you set and what mission did the Board of Directors entrust to you?
My first priority is strengthening our customers' trust. This is essential to me, and it means placing the customer at the center of the company. This commitment is already reflected in concrete changes in our organization.

All our users must benefit from the same level of service, regardless of their issues or location.