February 9, San Francisco — Uphold, a cloud-based financial services platform, is pleased to announce Jeff Pietras as Vice President of Payments. He will be responsible for development of new international markets and the expansion of payment services available to Uphold members as the company grows cross-border payments and money transfer capabilities.
For the past 15 years, Pietras has worked with some of the biggest names in financial services, consumer technology products and cross-border payments. His rich background of disruptive technologies will bring valuable experience to Uphold’s payments strategy as the company seeks inclusion across developed and developing markets.
“Uphold is excited to have a dynamic payments leader like Jeff onboard with a truly international pedigree and focused vision to continue the company’s disruptive transformation of this industry,” said Robin O’Connell, EVP of Growth & Partnerships at Uphold. “He brings a wealth of experience working across markets with an understanding of both traditional players and startups in the payments partnership ecosystem.”
Pietras joins Uphold from WorldRemit, a London fintech company operating in the mobile remittances space, where he was in charge of international development across key growth regions in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Previously, he worked at WesternUnion helping to lead the digital transformation of this incumbent global payments provider. Prior to that, he spent six years working at Nokia in Europe in various development roles expanding the business into new mobile services including financial applications for the unbanked. Pietras early career was in financial services working for J.P. Morgan in New York.