Monday 10 March 2014

Kalixa Group strengthens global leadership team

London - 10 March, 2014 – Kalixa Group, a next generation FinTech company, today announced the appointment of six senior executives, including a new CFO.

The new executives will take up leading roles across Kalixa and their core products:  Kalixa Pay, an e-wallet linked to smart devices with a prepaid MasterCard®; Kalixa Pro, a next generation small business account including a mobile POS; and Kalixa Accept, an in-store and online payment acquiring service.

Following a rebranding in April 2013, Kalixa Group has secured new contracts, expanded into North and Latin America, launched Kalixa Pay in Austria, partnered with Invapay and Sisal, and been selected by MasterCard® to provide test cards for acquirers worldwide.

The new hires are:
·         Julian Leigh – Chief Financial Officer: Julian joins Kalixa from bwin.party where he held various financial roles including Group Financial Controller and Head of Internal Audit and Risk Management. Prior to this Julian held senior roles in internal audit at HSBC.
·         Andre Boesing - Head of LATAM / US: Andre Boesing will lead Kalixa Group’s expansion into the US and Latin America. Andre, who has 13 years of experience within the payments industry, has held senior positions at Royal Bank of Scotland, Arthur Andersen, Bibit Global Payments and Smart2Pay.
·         Joerg Heidenreich – Sales Director, Kalixa Accept: Joerg has 13 years of experience in the payments industry working for companies including Wirecard and ClickandBuy. He was also responsible for helping SOFORT to grow from a start-up to a leading payment system in Europe.  
·         Jonathan Bennett – Sales Director, Kalixa Pay: Jonathan has substantial experience in issuing, most recently leading Access Prepaid’s European prepaid business. At Travelex he delivered $1.5 billion in annual prepaid sales volume across six markets. 
·         Colin Swain – Head of Product, Innovation and Insight: Colin takes a leading role in developing new products and propositions for Kalixa Group. Prior to joining Kalixa, Colin worked at MasterCard, Barclaycard and WhatIf Innovations where he helped businesses build and launch market leading payment propositions such as MasterPass™ and One Pulse™.
·         Danielle Stroud – Head of Marketing and Communications: Danielle is responsible for all Group marketing and communication activity. Previously Danielle was responsible for developing and executing MasterCard’s country marketing strategy for Ireland as well as co-marketing with partners in the UK and Ireland including Metro Bank, Lloyds, and Post Office.

Ed Chandler, CEO of Kalixa Group said, “Recruiting the very best Fintech talent is critical to our long term strategy and success. With these hires we have brought on board people who are experienced and innovative payment experts to keep Kalixa at the forefront of our industry’s evolution.

“These hires compliment a world class team based across London, Vienna, New York and Sao Paulo. We will continue to expand into other regions across the globe and launch our range of disruptive products that help consumers, small businesses and merchants make and accept payments anywhere, anyway and any time.”

These six executives will be joining Edward Chandler (CEO), Kamran Hedjri (COO), Kaveh Sheikh-Hestani  (Director, Service Operations), Deyan Petrov (Technology Director) and Erich Cagler  (Head of Project Management ) to complete Kalixa Group’s leadership team.