Darren Makarem appointed CFO at Cellulant

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The fintech veteran brings two decades of finance leadership across payments, digital assets and online travel to the pan-African payments company.

Darren Makarem has been appointed as CFO of Cellulant.

He joins the pan-African payments company from OnRamp, a Bangkok-based fintech operating across payment orchestration, neo-banking and B2B marketplaces, where he served as CEO.

“What excites me about Cellulant is the quality of what has already been built. A deep payment network, strong enterprise partnerships and a real focus on customer value. Cellulant’s true strength is its people, obsessed with solving the toughest payment challenges in the market. My priority is to ensure the business has the financial discipline, insight and operational support to move fast, stay bold and keep delivering," he said.

Darren brings more than twenty years of finance and operations leadership across fintech, online travel and digital assets.

At Agoda, the global online travel business, he served first as VP commercial finance before being appointed CFO, overseeing a 160-person global finance team and a payments network handling over $12 billion in annual transaction volume. He subsequently served as CFO for the Asia-Pacific and Latin America regions at Binance.

He is a graduate of Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, where he completed an MBA in strategy, marketing, finance and international business.

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