Q . DESCRIBE YOUR ROLE AND YOUR BACKGROUND . HOW DID YOU GET TO THIS POINT ?
» Before Rapyd , I wasn ’ t involved in payments or fintech , I was a cloud expert and entrepreneur . After three years in the military , I decided that I wanted to skip university and start my own company . Me and three other co-founders bootstrapped the business and built it into a multimillion-dollar organisation . The company ran for 10 years and we sold it in 2013 .
After that , I craved another challenge . The same group of co-founders moved forward to the next venture . It was 2015 and one had come back from a trip to the Czech Republic , shocked at the FX fees he ’ d paid while he was away . We initially had an idea for a consumer wallet that would phase out physical exchanges , but we completely underestimated how complex the financial services sector is . We spent almost a year trying to launch in the UK , and the amount of investment and infrastructure we had to build was so big for one market that it just didn ’ t make any sense for us to continue , as becoming global would be too complicated with all the different regulations .
We discovered a gaping hole slowing down the global commerce industry : there was no platform that enabled businesses to accept and send payments without having to build their own infrastructure .
That ’ s when we had the idea for Rapyd – to build a scalable fintech to provide financial services and infrastructure for other businesses to build on top of . Now , we ’ re building the world ’ s most expansive global fintech platform .
“ WE ARE CONTINUING TO GO FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH , DESPITE THE CURRENT ECONOMIC CONDITIONS . I ’ M PROUD OF THIS ”
Q . WHO WAS YOUR CHILDHOOD HERO AND WHY ?
» Michael Jordan . He had a fearless mentality , an endless drive to win and always worked hard to be the best . And he always took responsibility in the last few seconds of the game to try and win . fintechmagazine . com 21