Overview

Gender

male

Elias Ghanem is a Senior executive with over 20 years of experience in the payment arena across emerging markets. Elias has a strong entrepreneurial drive and proven success in Fintech start-up creation, fund raising, strategic partnerships, B2B sales, and customer acquisition.

Elias has a solid track record in regional leadership roles at PayPal-eBay Inc, Visa Inc and Accor Group in the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Latin. Elias is the former MD of PayPal Middle East and North Africa and previously MD of PayPal South East Asia and India. Before joining PayPal, he has been a long-time senior executive at Visa Inc in Latin America (Miami) and Asia (Singapore).

Elias has a deep knowledge in the fields of Payments, e-Commerce, e-Payments, e-Wallets, loyalty and remittances businesses. Elias has a multi-functional experience across strategy, regulatory framework, business development, sales and marketing and is a successful change agent with a history of leading emerging market entry both in high growth B2B and B2C environments.

Elias is actively involved in multiple startups as a co-founder, investor, advisor, Board member and management executive. Elias co-founded Telr in 2013 in Singapore and Dubai, as the Payment Gateway for Emerging markets to offer online, mobile and social media payment processing as well as Cash Management solutions to the exponentially growing eCommerce market across Middle east, Africa and Southeast Asia. Telr won the “2014 Start-up of the Year” award by Arabian Business in Nov 2014. Elias held the CEO role from inception to Dec 2014 and became the Chairman of the Board of Telr in January 2015.

Since March 2015, Elias is as well the Chairman of the Board of Zoomaal , the leading crowdfunding platform in the Middle East and North Africa. He also sits on the Board of Bridg (mobile to mobile payment), Paykii (cross border bill payment), and Yellowpay (Bitcoin payment gateway).

Elias holds an MBA from the University of Miami, USA, and a BS from the “Institut de Preparation à l’Administration et la Gestion”, Business School in Paris, France, with major in Finance. He is fluent in five languages, and a 2013 nominee for the Arabian Business Start-ups “Mentor of the Year” award.