Senior industry players bring key insights and expertise to rapidly growing company
[Singapore, Amsterdam, Mumbai and London, 28 March 2022] – Payment industry technology company iPiD has formed a Senior Advisory Board that brings together an expert group of leaders across the banking and technology sectors to provide the company with valuable perspectives on the evolving needs of the global payments market.
The new members of this Advisory Board are Christian Sarafidis, Microsoft Chief Business Development Officer WWFSI, Kosta Peric, Deputy Director, Financial Services for the Poor, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Nick Lewins, former banking Chief Technology Officer and now an advisor in data and AI, cloud technology and digital transformation.
“We are delighted to be able to work with this group of proven innovators,” says Damien Dugauquier, iPiD co-founder. “Their experience, insights and networks will help us to grow the company and develop our offering so that we continue to meet the needs of our customers and the market. We appreciate the thought leadership we get from our board members and the way they help us to move forward effectively.”
Collectively, the Advisory Board members’ expertise spans a wide range of business and technological areas that are critical for the development of global payment markets.
Prior to joining Microsoft, Christian held executive positions for multinational groups in financial services and the technology industry including SWIFT, where he served as both Chief Marketing Officer and Deputy Chief Executive EMEA. While CMO, Christian launched the global SWIFTgpi initiative to improve the cross-border payments experience and, today, an average of 50.3 million gpi messages are exchanged over the SWIFT network in a single day. In his current role at Microsoft, Christian’s focus is on helping financial institutions drive their digital transformation to reduce time to value, increase agility and optimise the total cost of ownership.
“iPiD solves a real payment industry problem and we are happy to see Microsoft Azure playing an important role in such innovation,” says Christian. “The board has just met for the first time and kicked off with some dynamic discussions. Independent advisory boards can play an important role in driving thought leadership within the industry and helping to shape the future of payments.”
Kosta is a technologist with a particular interest in how technology, payments and innovation intersect. As part of his role at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, he leads the Level One Project initiative to foster deployment of digital payment and identity platforms to serve the poor. Kosta is also Chair of the Board of the Mojaloop Foundation, which hosts the Mojaloop opensource software, and serves on the board of the InterLedger Foundation, the home of the open protocol for sending payments across the internet. Previously, Kosta was the co-founder and leader of Innotribe, the SWIFT initiative to enable collaborative innovation in the financial industry. At SWIFT, he was also the chief architect of SWIFTNet, the backbone of the worldwide secure network.
“Supporting new technologies and emerging companies is important if we are going to solve the big challenges faced by the industry and in particular by poor or more remote communities in accessing financial services,” says Kosta. “I’m looking forward to working with iPiD as I believe this technology will help to reduce the cost of making payments and therefore can help to accelerate the adoption and use of financial services in low- and medium-income countries.”
Nick brings hands-on experience in the application of technology to banking and has also led research into areas of strategic interest for the banking and payments industries. Earlier roles include Chief Technology Officer at Commonwealth Bank. His most recent position at Microsoft included Global Financial Services Lead for Microsoft Research, where his areas of focus included the end-to-end encryption of sensitive data in modern data estates, industry cloud offerings, AI in financial services and trusted data sharing.
“iPiD’s approach is important because it will help the payments industry to replicate some of the advances we’ve seen in domestic systems in the international payment space,” says Nick. “Crucially, iPiD leverages the existing payments infrastructure and its orchestration model provides trusted multi-party data exchange within the broader payments ecosystem in partnership with its stakeholders.”
Press contact: media@ipid.tech
https://ipid.tech/
To read more about cross-border payments please go to our blog
——————-
About iPiD
iPiD is a fast-growing, venture-backed fintech start-up that is founded by a global team who have held senior roles at major payments and technology companies, including SWIFT and Thomson Reuters. Together, we share a vision to simplify cross-border payments to be as easy as a text message.
We achieve this by partnering with financial services providers (e.g. banks, payment fintech, wallets, remittance companies) to deliver a suite of proxy look-up, request-to-pay and payment-to-wallet services. It is a first-of-its-kind service that makes cross-border payments easy by needing only a simple proxy for the payee’s identity. We act as a data orchestrator and enable global payments based on a phone number, email address, QR code, Corporate Registration Number and other aliases.
iPiD is built for all – we do not replace banks, payment fintechs, wallets or remittance companies; nor do we replace existing payment rails. We provide an addressing and messaging service that all can leverage to offer a better user experience.
Our global team has representatives in Singapore, Jakarta, Hanoi, Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai, Amsterdam, Brussels, Madrid, Johannesburg, Seattle and London.
