WePay, the payments company powering platform businesses, today announced Osama Bedier has joined its board of directors.
This move aligns with the company's recent financing announcement to expand internationally and accelerate development of its payments platform API -- which has grown revenues over 600% in the last year. WePay processes payments for online marketplaces, crowdfunding websites and small business software companies. Bedier's extensive payments, commerce and mobile experience will be instrumental as WePay continues to innovate its payments API.
"We are thrilled to have Osama join our board," said Bill Clerico, CEO of WePay. "Osama is one of the very few payments executives who have built category-defining products from scratch. Osama's entrepreneurial spirit and ability to create is apparent in the products he has brought to market: PayPal Checkout, PayPal Adaptive Payments, PayPal Mobile App and Google Wallet."
A seasoned technology executive, Bedier's payment industry knowledge is deep and broad. Bedier was vice president of Wallet & Payments at Google for three years and previously was Vice President of Platform, Mobile and New Ventures at PayPal. He oversaw PayPal's open global payments platform that allowed independent and enterprise developers to build payment applications for a wide variety of online and mobile applications.
"In this bottom-up economy chapter, the internet is transforming every major industry through amazing experiences on efficient technology platforms," said Osama Bedier. "Payments friction is often the major stumbling block. WePay is quietly unlocking some of the thorniest issues and empowering these platforms to accelerate growth while doubling down on their own core."
WePay's proprietary VedaTM social risk engine underpins its API and allows platforms to avoid the traditional tradeoff between a great user experience and a robust fraud-protection system. Because WePay can make most of its risk decisions with data provided by a platform and a user's social footprint, that user can start accepting payments the instant they register on the platform. Platforms can effectively outsource their risk infrastructure to WePay without mortgaging their desired user experience. And as WePay grows, Veda only gets stronger. Veda is already analyzing over 250,000 transactions per month. Since 2012, it has prevented more than $45 million in attempted fraud.