Our judging panel consists of vetted fintech and payment industry experts who will evaluate the RemTECH Awards 2020 entries. We appreciate their commitment to furthering money transfer innovation by taking time out of their schedules to contribute.
Luis Beneytez
Luis is the CEO and Founder of TKS. With over 18 years of experience working as an advisor of many Money transfers, he is a well know the financial sector
He manages different payments projects in Spain, Italy, Romania, Portugal, USA, Panama, Chile, and Ecuador, taking a great overview of the money transfer industry
Luis founded and finance Transfer Zero the first fintech registered at a Bank of Spain that digitalize all the money transfer process. In 2017 TransferZero was sold to Bitpesa
Now from TKS offer advice and IT solutions for the money transfers interested to digitalize
Leon Isaacs
Leon has a deep knowledge of remittances and in particular, how they work; the development potential of them, regulatory issues across multiple markets; the existing product offerings in the market; the challenges and opportunities in send and receive markets as well as consumer needs. He is a partner and founder of Developing Markets Association (DMA) in London where he provides assistance to and deliver projects for a wide range of stakeholders interested in harnessing remittances for development. In this area DMA clients are predominately multilateral institutions, national development agencies, money services business and Diaspora organisations.
Prior to establishing DMA, he worked for 15 years at a senior level for a number of international money transfer companies including MoneyGram, Travelex, Thomas Cook and Coinstar. At these companies he was very involved in developing the strategic direction of the businesses and was responsible for new product development as well as outreach strategies for increasing market share.
Leon continually liaises with international regulators, donor agencies technology companies, consumers, and all stakeholders with an interest in the remittance market as well as a speaker at conferences such as the IMTC, the International Money Transfer Conferences.
Yelena Reznikova
Yelena Reznikova is the Head of Banking Partnerships at a corporate credit card startup called Brex, which leverages next-gen technology to better underwrite credit risk for startup companies.
Prior to that, she served as the Director of Partnerships at financial data platform called Quovo, where she worked with financial institutions and regulators to define data access protocols and empower innovators to democratize finance by building consumer-friendly financial applications. After Quovo’s acquisition by Plaid in 2019, joined the Silicon Valley unicorn where she led Lending and Payment partnerships. Plaid was subsequently acquired by VISA for $5.3B in 2020.
Yelena holds degrees in Industrial Labor Relations from Cornell University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She’s held roles at the intersection of policy and technology at the UN, in venture capital, and technology firms of various sizes.
Nabil Kabbani
Nabil is the President and CEO of CieloPay, a CGH portfolio company and part of IMTC’s Advisory Board.
Nabil is a growth driver and a multi-disciplinary global leader with a career built on leveraging strategy, technology, and people to transform and scale businesses. He spent twelve years at Western Union. The Western Union Company is a US financial services company with headquarters in Englewood, Colorado with offices and agents all over the world offering services such as money transfers (P2P, P2B and B2B, money orders, and other business & commercial services. With close to 12,000 employees, more than 500,000 agent locations in over 200 countries and territories, Western Union is helping it grow to a multi-billion dollar public company working from various locations in the U.S., Beirut, Dubai, Paris, and Brussels.
He led a venture capitalist funded startup that grew through nine acquisitions to become a major player in the Fintech industry. He was the CEO of CommerceGate, a payment processing company in the e-commerce arena prior to joining ACT Holdings. He grew ACT from a $30MM student loan ARM company to an industry-leading $400MM+ diversified BPO. Lately, he was President of QLess, a disruptive SaaS technology startup, helping to scale the business, complete two fund raises, renegotiate venture debt, and double revenues.
Nabil is a U.S. citizen of Lebanese and Russian heritage, studied economics and holds an MBA in finance from the American University of Beirut.
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Patrice Kiiru
Patrice is the Group Associate Director of International Banking & Payments at Equity Bank, responsible for Diaspora Banking & Remittances, Cross-Border Transactions, Financial Institutions and Non-Presence Countries. Patrice oversees teams in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Sudan, DR Congo and Ethiopia. Equity Bank is one of the largest commercial banks in East and Central Africa with a customer base of over 14 million customers.
Patrice is a career banker with 16 years in the banking industry, and prior to moving to East Africa, Patrice worked in the US at Bank of America Merrill Lynch as a Vice President in the Commercial Banking and at Wells Fargo Bank in the Business Banking Group. Patrice has a Bachelors in Organic Chemistry from Cal-Poly University and an MBA from University of California – Irvine.
Sandra Yao
Sandra Yao is the SVP Africa for Thunes, responsible for leading the Africa region where she has played a key role in building key partnerships and business opportunities while strategically outlining smarter transfer solutions for cross border payments.
Previously, Sandra was the Director of New Business Development at The National Bank of Kenya, where she set up two departments for the bank: Chinese Business department, Innovation & Digitization center; where she managed to develop and offer business direction and a quick Market Penetration in Chinese business and create an environment to embrace innovation & digitization within the bank.
With 15 years of experience in the payment industry in Africa, Sandra continues to make a positive contribution to shape the industry into a more inclusive ecosystem.
Daniel Webber
Daniel is Founder and CEO at FXC Intelligence. FXC Intelligence is a financial data company specializing in international payments, payment cards and ecommerce industries with a focus on pricing data. Clients come from the banking, payments, regulator, governments and investment sectors.
Daniel is a leading influencer in the international payments space globally. He is frequently invited to speak at industry conferences and provide insights and data on the sector. Daniel is widely quoted across the sector including in The Economist, Wall Street Journal, Reuters and Daniel is also a contributor for Forbes.com. FXC Intelligence’s weekly industry newsletter is the most widely read in the international payments market.
Ronald Mazursky
Ron is Managing Director of PayGility Advisors, and the Founder, Officer and Board Member of NYPAY Inc. He is a financial services industry thought leader and payments expert, with over 35-years’ experience with banking products and services in the US and abroad. These experiences range from product management (JP Morgan Chase) to innovation (Mastercard), from strategy consulting (Edgar Dunn, Novantas, Card Associates) to industry research and analysis (Mercator Advisory Group, Jack Henry & Associates). His experience is at both client-side and vendor-side companies.
His consulting experience includes innovation, strategy, marketing, sales, market research, industry research, fintech evaluations, AI/ML adoption. Most recently, he ran the industry research and market research function at Jack Henry & Associates, gaining a first-hand perspective on doing business with community banks and credit unions. This role also included evaluating FinTechs for potential partnerships through a standardized rating and ranking methodology he created and applied to hundreds of companies.
Ron has been a frequent speaker at financial services industry, company and client conferences. Ron has developed and authored multiple articles in financial industry publications as well as two syndicated market research studies on preferred payments called CobrandDynamics and PaymentDynamics. Finally, Ron founded NYPAY in 2006, and is currently a board member and an officer. NYPAY is the largest industry association in the US for senior executives and leaders in payments and fintechs (2,500+ members).
Ron has his BA in (Experimental) Psychology from Binghamton University and his MBA from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University.
Sofia Freyder
Currently Sofia is an Executive Director with JP Morgan Chase Bank responsible for real-time payments launch in the US market. She is a highly experienced product management and marketing professional with a strong and varied background in the payments industry. She has a successful track record in directing all aspects of payments product ideation, development and market launch in the US and international markets.
Just before that she was a Global Head of Product Marketing and Strategic Partnerships at Earthport where she managed the company’s product strategy, roadmap and innovation. In her role she worked on enabling the business to translate its global cross-border payments vision into meaningful selling propositions and product innovation, drove strategic partnership including innovative partnership with Ripple distributed ledger technology company.
Prior to that, Sofia was a Product Management Senior Director with Mastercard, where she worked on the development and commercialization of new cross-border payments products – Mastercard Send.
Previously she spent several years in senior Product Marketing and Product Management roles at Western Union in charge of both domestic and international business where she developed and launched several payments products for different regions worldwide.
Sofia has a Master’s and Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration as well as a Master’s Degree in Marketing.
Sofia is very passionate about global payment and remittance space, proactively involved with industry players consulting on latest innovations, industry challenges and opportunities.