Rapyd Hires Senior Execs From PayPal Singapore

Strategic hires follow the digital payments firm’s $40-million series B funding round in February. Silicon Valley-based fintech-as-a-service platform Rapyd has hired Richard Oh as its APAC Senior Director of Network Management and Larry Lee as Senior Director of Network Growth and Optimization, the firm announced in a statement.

Oh and Lee, who have four decades of experience in the industry between them, join from PayPal. Both will be based in Singapore, where they will support the firm’s strategy to expand operations and infrastructure in Asia Pacific.

Richard and Larry join Rapyd at an inflection point of our global growth, and their expertise will be essential as we build out the Rapyd Global Payment Network,» said Joel Yarbrough, Rapyd’s VP, Asia Pacific.

Rapyd bundles a range of digital payments-related services for businesses, including funds collection, funds payouts, currency transfers, ID verification and card issuing.

The hires come some three months after the announcement of the firm’s successful $40-million series B funding round led by payments giant Stripe and General Catalyst, one of Stripe’s biggest backers. This brings the total amount raised by Rapyd, which was founded by Arik Shtilman in 2015 and started business in 2017, to $60 million.

In Wednesday’s statement, Rapyd said it plans to significantly expand its network capabilities and use cases in 2019 and 2020, extending its disbursement, compliance, foreign exchange management, and issuing solutions.

Oh was responsible for building the backbone of the payment of PayPal’s business, expanding its payment and disbursement capabilities across Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the emerging markets. He also worked for eBay, where he was part of the company’s core payments and partnerships team.

Lee also joins Rapyd after working at PayPal and eBay, where he held key responsibilities including geographic expansion, cross border trade, partnerships, regulatory licensing, financial operations, and corporate structure and governance. He was most recently director of International Licensing at PayPal, where he helped develop market entry strategies and was responsible for a portfolio of payments and e-money licenses for the international business.

In Singapore, Rapyd has partnered OCBC Bank to enable real-time bank payments for local consumers and online retailers. The partnership leverages PayNow, Singapore’s national peer-to-peer funds transfer service, to allow the bank’s customers to make real-time bank transfers using the OCBC Pay Anyone app.