Paysend Further Strengthens Its Board with Former Mastercard Europe Chief Javier Perez

- Paysend strengthens its board with experienced payments professional
- Mr. Perez spent 25 years at Mastercard, with 15 years as President Mastercard Europe
- The new appointment follows the successful Series B funding round in which Paysend raised $125 million at a valuation of $700+ million

LONDON – 29 NOVEMBER 2021 – Paysend, the card-to-card pioneer and international payments platform, today announces the appointment to its board of former President Mastercard Europe, Javier Perez, as a non-executive director. 

The news follows the company’s recent announcement of its growth to 5 million customers globally in under five years – with one and a half million customers joining in the last six months alone – and that it has raised an additional $125 million Series B investment round in May. Last week the company also announced that it has been ranked the third fastest growing technology company in the UK by Deloitte, thanks to 14,498 per cent growth.

Mr. Perez will have an active role in Paysend’s future business strategy, working closely with the company’s senior management team to drive further global expansion. He will also help extend Paysend’s ecosystem of strategic partnerships as well as lead Paysend’s global open banking ambitions.

Mr. Perez is currently the Founder and Managing Partner at Global PayTech Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in early stage paytech companies that are looking to raise seed, Series A, or Series B round funding. A globally recognised payments industry professional, he spent 25 years at Mastercard, including 15 years as president of Mastercard Europe, and two years as president of Mastercard Latin America and the Caribbean. In his time at Mastercard Mr. Perez helped merge Mastercard with Europay, integrating two large players in the payments space and taking the new entity to IPO.

Ronnie Millar, CEO at Paysend, said: “Javier has an extensive and successful track record in new business development, mergers and acquisitions and global strategy, and under his leadership, Mastercard Europe was recognized as the leader in payments technology innovation. We’re thrilled to welcome Javier to the Paysend board and look forward to the active role he’ll play in helping to drive our business strategy as well as further cementing relationships with key players in the payment ecosystem.”

Javier Perez, Founder and Managing Partner at Global PayTech Ventures and Non-Executive Director at Paysend, said: “I am delighted to be joining such a pioneering and fast-growing company in Paysend. The company is positively disrupting the payments market in making financial services more accessible and inclusive for individual people and small businesses. I am hugely excited by Paysend’s potential to become the number one payments platform of choice for customers around the world.” 

Mr. Perez joins fellow experienced non-executive board members Mark Evans, a startup technology investor; Michael Fazio, Chairman of MARCorp Financial; and, Humbert de Liedekerke, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at One Peak Partners. Separately, Paysend’s advisory board members include: Gary Kearns, President and CEO of Growth Analytics LLC; Tom Zschach, Chief Innovation Officer at SWIFT; Brad Koenig, Co-CEO of Apex Technology Acquisition Corp; Alireza Masrour, General Partner at Plug & Play Ventures; and, Jairo Riveros, former Head of Market Models and Business Strategies for MasterCard Worldwide.