All change: Pomelo Pay promotes chair to new European CEO role

Andrew Doukanaris has been chair of Pomelo Pay’s board since January 2019 and will now sit as CEO of UK and Europe for the fintech.

Payments have been taking off over the past year and, to help Pomelo Pay navigate this unchartered territory, it has made a new addition to its executive team.

AltFi can exclusively reveal that Andrew Doukanaris, who has been chair of the board since January 2019, will now sit as permanent CEO for the UK and Europe.

In his new role, Doukanaris will help guide Pomelo Pay through its expansion and growth plans, as well as helping it to realise its product development capabilities.

“Having been consultant, board advisor and Chair to Pomelo I am delighted to have been given the opportunity to lead the business as CEO in the UK and Europe,” Pomelo chairman and UK and Europe CEO Andrew Doukanaris said. 

“In this capacity, my role will be to learn from and develop my team’s knowledge and expertise to build successful partnerships within the ecosystem, including with businesses, merchants, cardholders, other Fintech partners and global payment schemes.”

As well as his new job at Pomelo Pay, Doukanaris is also CEO of Flotta Consulting Limited, an advisor to the board of Innovate Banque, a Level 39-based fintech, and an ambassador for Level 39.

“Andrew’s permanent appointment as permanent CEO for the UK and Europe is reflective of Pomelo’s significant growth over the past few months,” Pomelo CEO Vincent Choi added.

“His work helping us build the Pomelo product and brand to date has been instrumental in our success so far this year, and we look forward to welcoming him on board as a full-time member of the team.”

Last month, the payments startup partnered with global payments giant Mastercard to issue its debit cards to its customers in order to speed up their payment processing.

In April 2021, Pomelo expanded its partnership with the Bank of Maldives, giving its customers full access to Pomelo’s suite of payments products.

Pomelo Pay was founded in 2017 as a way for UK retailers to accept AliPay and WeChat Pay through QR codes. 

Since then, the service has grown significantly to offer a full payments-as-a-service API, plus it’s soon launching contactless payments via smartphones via NFC.