London-based fintech startup Nuggets has signed up former Visa UK Managing Director Kevin Jenkins, in a coup for the blockchain payments company.
Jenkins was appointed MD of Visa UK and Ireland in July 2014. He has signed up to sit on Nuggets’ board as a non-executive director.
Nuggets uses Ethereum to underpin its ecommerce payments and ID platform.
Alastair Johnson, founder and CEO of Nuggets, said: “Kevin is a true payments pioneer, with an amazing reputation for establishing partnerships with financial Institutions, technology partners, retailers and e-commerce providers.
Former Visa UK&I MD Kevin Jenkins
“He’ll help us build the relationships we need to roll out the product as quickly as possible. We’re thrilled that, after so long working on customer payment journeys at Visa, Kevin will be helping us bring even more fundamental and exciting change to the way people manage payments and ID.”
The move comes a month after the UK startup inked an agreement with QFPay, one of the largest Chinese mobile payment solution providers, which is used by Asian e-commerce giants Alipay and WeChat Pay.
QFPay has managed more than 500 million mobile payment transactions to date. Asian merchants using QFPay will also be able to use Nuggets’ blockchain-based payments and identity features under the agreement.
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Jenkins has held leadership roles at both Visa and Mastercard and was described by Nugget as having “substantial experience of pioneering digital innovations within regulated environments, managing governance changes, and enhancing customer payments journeys in the physical and digital world.”
Jenkins drove the adoption of contactless payments at UK merchants, including a successful partnership with TfL has led to more than a billion contactless journeys.
The Nuggets Alpha for iOS and Android is now live.
