Andrei Afanasiev

• Providing strategic guidance to the Earned Wage Access (EWA) startup in launching and growing business across the region.

Beyond One has acquired Virgin Mobile, Friendi Mobile & Friendi Pay across GCC and LatAm to build a personalized digital ecosystem combining telco and mobile financial services. I am leading the end-to-end launch and scaling of Friendi Pay digital wallet in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, combining telecommunications and financial services to create integrated payment solutions: • Digital Wallet Strategy: Developing and executing the entire business strategy and product roadmap for Friendi Pay digital wallet, with focus on cross-border transfers, card issuance, multi-currency accounts and other fintech services. • Launch & Expansion: Setting up commercial operations for launching the UAE wallet from scratch, including hiring of core team members and building GTM plans. Leading the digital wallet business in Saudi Arabia with a large registered user base, ensuring alignment with local requirements and business objectives, as well as regulatory bodies and partners. • P&L Ownership: Driving P&L accountability through data-driven focus on main revenue streams as well as optimization of cost structures to increase profitability and achieve business targets. • Product Development: Collaborating with cross-functional teams to enhance user experience, introduce new features & services, as well as drive adoption of various cross-border payment solutions. • Marketing & Growth: Leading all strategic and tactical marketing and growth initiatives to drive user acquisition and retention. • Strategic Partnerships: Building and managing partnerships with payment schemes, banks, and service providers to enable seamless cross-border payment capabilities & other fintech value-added services.

Paysend is one of the fastest-growing Fintech startups, focusing on transfers, global accounts, wallets, and other financial services to bring a seamless payment ecosystem to more than 10 million consumers globally. My role was to lead market entry and scaling of cross-border digital money transfer services in the UAE: • Market Development: Led end-to-end business establishment including licensing, legal entity setup, and operations development in regulated environment. • Strategic Partnerships: Built and maintained partnerships with financial institutions, payment schemes, regulator, exchange houses, open banking providers, and eKYC solutions for launching local operations. • Business Strategy: Owned full accountability for developing and executing regional business strategy, including market analysis, competitive positioning, & growth planning resulting in 3x business growth. • Financial Performance: Managed regional P&L with focus on driving successful customer acquisition and retention, as well as improve margins by bringing new local partners to reduce operational costs. • Regulatory Compliance: Worked closely with legal and compliance teams to ensure adherence to local financial regulations, worked with CBUAE on the license application process and partnership approval. • B2B: Assisted Paysend enterprise team in generating local leads and introducing B2B proposition to the local fintech ecosystem.

Arival Bank is the US-licensed digital bank for SME customers. • Joined as Regional Lead for launching Arival Bank in the UAE. • Moved to Global Head of Marketing & Customer Experience role to set up global marketing from scratch, including communications, brand refresh, development of web assets, customer analytics & insights. • Worked with early adopters to improve the onboarding funnel, and discover their financial needs to enhance product offerings via building respective partnerships & and integrations.

My role at MoneyGram was to drive growth across 3 key regions – the Middle East, South Asia, and CIS, with additional involvement in projects across Africa, Europe, North America and Asia.

Around Fintech in 8 hours is an online fintech foundation course designed by the Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship.In a structured format, the course delivers a firm understanding of the state of Fintech to the participants. It has been designed with senior lecturers of the major universities and industry experts from startup CEOs, head of innovations and Fintech leaders.