Paula Buchel

Deloitte Africa Payments Lead

Paula is the Africa Payments leader for Deloitte, based in Johannesburg. She is an Associate Director, responsible for the financial services strategy consulting offering within Monitor Deloitte.
Paula’s career started in the banking industry with Investec Bank, focused on investment management and the rapidly growing linked products sector. After an MBA she moved into strategy consulting, joining Bain & Company as a generalist Consultant, advising clients in financial services, mining, and the airline industry. She later joined Standard Bank Corporate and Investment Bank, focused on transactional banking and global markets, initially in Johannesburg and later in London.

Paula consults largely on payments and fintech growth strategies within the financial services and telco sectors, across the African continent. Her clients are MNOs, banks, insurers, and retailers, many of whom are expanding their businesses through platform and ecosystem business models. She also works with payment regulators and clearing houses, where payment modernisation is being enabled by regulatory change, technology advancements and customer expectations.

Paula has co-authored and contributed to several Deloitte papers: recently ‘The Regenesis of SA Payments: What needs to change?’, ‘The future of payments in South Africa: Enabling financial inclusion in a converging world’, ‘Global Payments remade by Covid19’, ‘The evolution of the payments value model’ and “The expanding role of non-banks in South Africa”.

She holds an MBA from Wits Business School and Bachelor and Honours degrees from the University of Johannesburg. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Gordon Institute of Business Science.

https://www2.deloitte.com/za/en.html