We recently reported that the Central Bank of Cyprus-regulated payment processor and merchant acquirer Payabl.cy Limited (formerly PowerCash21) led a funding round of Swiss payment startup Klarpay, investing €3 million. Payabl Group CEO Ugne Buraciene joined Klarpay‘s Advisory Board as part of this investment. In light of this remarkable new payment network, we wanted to share more about Ugne Buraciene with our readers and have prepared a brief profile. She is certainly a remarkable payment expert.
Payabl And Klarpay
First, it should be noted that Payabl was founded by former Wirecard managers Ruediger Trautmann, Dietmar Knoechelmann, and his wife Ayelet Fruchtlander Knoechelmann in 2011 as E.E.A. MULTICURRENCY CARD PAYMENT PROCESSING LTD.
Follow the Payabl profile on PayRate42 here.
Klarpay AG, on the other hand, appears to be something of a spin-off of the CySEC-regulated investment firm BDSwiss, at least in terms of personnel. We already reported on this investment transaction a few weeks ago (report here). Several key people at Klarpay were previously managers at BDSwiss.
The Experienced Payment Expert
Ugne Buraciene lists Frankfurt, Germany, as her place of residence on her LinkedIn profile. She is also the Country Ambassador for Cyprus for the European Women Payments Network (EWPN), besides her roles at Payabl and Klarpay. She joined Payabl in June 2020 and previously spent several years as a Manager for Cardpay (now Unlimint), most recently in the position of Client Director & Head of the UK Office.
She spent a brief stint from 2013 to 2014 as a payment systems analyst at the infamous FMBE Card Services (FMBECS). This was when Guy El-Khoury used to be the company’s CEO. This Cypriot entity was part of the Tanzanian FBME Bank, which was accused of facilitating financial transactions for multinational organized crime organizations and Hezbollahthe by the U.S. FinCEN in 2015. Later that year, the Central Bank of Cyprus (CBC) initiated the so-called Kroll Report that blamed FBMECS for credit card manipulations. CBC consequently revoked the bank’s license (report here).
