TPAY MOBILE’s Founder and CEO Sahar Salama hands over Group CEO responsibilities to become Group Chairwoman
ex-CEO of Mollie, Gaston Aussems, named successor
guftech – UAE: TPAY MOBILE, the leader in mobile payments in the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey (META), today announces it has appointed Gaston Aussems, previously CEO of Mollie, as Group CEO, effective 4th July 2022.
Founder and current CEO, Sahar Salama, will move into a Group Chairwoman position, and will be working closely alongside Gaston Aussems over the coming months to ensure a smooth leadership transition for the fast-growing company.
Gaston Aussems comments: “I’m incredibly excited to be taking the baton from Sahar at such an exciting time for TPAY MOBILE. The company’s mission of empowering underserved regions’ digital economies is something I wholeheartedly support, and I look forward to being part of the next stage of its journey.”
Gaston Aussems was CEO of European payments giant Mollie for over seven years, where his leadership was a crucial success factor in the company achieving its unicorn valuation in 2020. He has since spent two years as a venture partner, at firms including Atlantica and Antler, and a board member of impact investor Oikocredit as well as various fintechs and telecommunications companies, including Yolt and Talk360.
Sahar Salama explains: “All of us at TPAY MOBILE should be so proud of everything that we have achieved. We changed the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa for the better by delivering cross-border micropayments at scale, and significantly improving financial inclusion in the region. While we were always ambitious in our vision of what TPAY MOBILE could become, we never imagined that our services would be so rapidly adopted by our partners and customers, and this makes me excited for what the future holds, especially as TPAY MOBILE expands its payment capabilities to new digital merchants and non-digital services.
“The time is now right for someone new to take TPAY MOBILE to the next level, and I trust that Gaston is that person. His experience of successfully scaling a complex, multi-country payments company, combined with his technical background, product-focused mentality, and global, entrepreneurial mindset, makes him the perfect person to execute TPAY MOBILE’s ambitious plans. I will be moving on to focus on a purely strategic and advisory role for the Group in this exciting next growth phase for TPAY MOBILE.”
Babatunde Soyoye, current Group Chairman at TPAY MOBILE, says: “It has been a pleasure to partner with Sahar over the years and witness the passion, hard work and dedication that has helped grow TPAY MOBILE into the innovative company it is today. Sahar laid a great foundation in building a unique mobile payments network of merchants and Telcos across Middle East, Africa, and Turkey. The next phase of growth is about building on this incredible platform to make TPAY MOBILE the market leading digital merchant acquirer and mobile payments enabler in its markets and we believe that Gaston will help us achieve this”.
