Yapily appoints new chief product officer

Source: Yapily press release

Yapily, the open banking infrastructure provider, today announces that Roland Selmer has joined the executive team as Chief Product Officer (CPO).

Roland brings over two decades experience in building API first products at organisations operating in highly regulated markets, most recently for Vonage and Telefonica Digital, and will help develop Yapily’s developer focussed approach.

Prior to joining Yapily, Roland was Senior Vice President for Product at business cloud communications provider Vonage (previously Nexmo), where he played a central role in Product Development and significantly growing API revenues. Prior to Vonage, Roland worked at European telco Telefónica Digital, where he helped Telefónica’s transformation into a Digital Telco.

Roland joins the team with demonstrative success in delivering successful products to market, and a genuine enthusiasm for scaling businesses. The appointment comes a month after Yapily announced its Series B funding raise of $51m, led by Sapphire Ventures, to expand across Europe and beyond as open finance regulation is implemented globally. It is part of Yapily’s commitment to continue to invest in its market-leading infrastructure to pave the way for open finance around the world, creating financial inclusion for all.

Speaking about his appointment Roland Selmer, Chief Product Officer for Yapily says, “I’m really excited to join the Yapily team at this inflection point for both the company and the industry as a whole. We’re only at the nascent stages of an open finance revolution and there is so much scope for disruption across the board. Finance is such a critical enabler of any modern society and I’m looking forward to working with the Yapily team to make the best possible experience people want to use when it comes to open finance.

“I see real similarities between what Yapily is doing with open finance today and the transformational journey we saw with the telcos 10 years ago where communications became democratised. As a pure infrastructure player whose focus is on creating an amazing developer experience, Yapily’s ethos and culture reflects its dedicated path towards open finance and I’m delighted to be here.”

Stefano Vaccino, Chief Executive Officer for Yapily says, “We are delighted to welcome Roland to Yapily. We’re growing fast and have ambitious plans for the next few years. Roland joins us with a new perspective from an industry that has experienced similar disruption and will enable us to improve and expand our product offering in order to become the world’s leading infrastructure provider for open finance. Roland’s experience speaks for itself and I’m thrilled he’s decided to join us on this journey.”

The appointment comes at a pivotal time for the company, as it positions itself as a global player in the open finance space after announcing a number of strategic partnerships including American Express, Intuit Quickbooks, Vivid, Moneyfarm and BUX.