Mobile banking and payments company Monitise has announced it has appointed a former senior Visa executive as co-CEO as it looks to expand its operations across the globe.
Elizabeth Buse, former executive vice-president of solutions at Visa, will join the company immediately, having spent 16 years at Visa before stepping down in March.
Buse, who had previously been a member of the Monitise board from July 2010 to October 2012, will work alongside current chief executive Alastair Lukies, heading up Monitise’s day-to-day operations, as well as overseeing technology, product, sales and marketing.
Lukies, who founded the company in 2003, will now focus on corporate development and maintaining relationships with partners, shareholders, and industry stakeholders.
Monitise oversaw $71bn of transactions last year, with customers including Telefonica, Samsung, MasterCard and Visa. The company, which currently has 28m registered users worldwide, recently announced it plans to increase this number to 200m by 2018 by expanding its mobile banking, payments, and commerce arms.
Monitise shares rose as much as 7.1% following news of the appointment. As part of her appointment, Buse was granted five million options over ordinary shares of 1p each in Monitise.
"Monitise occupies a unique position in the global Mobile Money ecosystem as one of the few technology enablers with proven bank-grade solutions across banking, payments and commerce," said Buse.
"I am enormously impressed by the Group’s quality of products and services, the technology and, most of all, the people. I cannot see a better-placed business to take advantage of the Mobile Money opportunity and am delighted to be joining Monitise."
"I am delighted that Elizabeth is joining us at such an important point in the Monitise journey to help me lead the next chapter in our history," Lukies added.
"On behalf of our staff around the world I welcome Elizabeth and very much look forward to working shoulder to shoulder with her, leveraging our complementary skills as we capitalise on the global Mobile Money opportunity."
Alongside Buse’s appointment, Monitise also announced it was welcoming two new non-executive directors, with current Clifford Chance LLP Global COO Amanda Burton and Brooks Brothers International President Paulette Garafalo to its board.
