Zwipe strengthens its Board of Directors

At the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Zwipe AS held May 22 2018, Jörgen Lantto was elected as the new Chairman of the Board of Directors, replacing Clas Thelin. In addition, Kim Humborstad, Dorian Barak, Francis van den Bosch, Johan Biehl and Dennis Jones were elected as new board members. Dorian Barak will replace Dr. Lui Ruopeng as board representative for the company’s largest shareholder, Kuang-Chi. Kim Humborstad will act as Deputy Chairman. Lars Windfeldt, Espen Tøndel and Weizi Huang were re-elected.

 

The new board has substantial combined industry and financial experience and will support Zwipe and its leadership team’s execution of a sharpened strategy focused on commercial success and growth as it integrates its technology platform within the biometric payment cards market first and then into other verticals, services and form factors such as wearables and IoT devices. Together with an ecosystem of partners including global brands within security, financial services and IDs, Zwipe is on a mission of ‘Making Convenience Secure™’ for a wide range of industries and technology form factors.

 

Below follows a short description of the newly elected Chairman and Board members:

Mr. Lantto has been a member of Zwipe’s Board of Directors since November 2016 and is a key strategic advisor working closely with the company’s management to shape the path Zwipe takes moving forward. He is the former CEO of Fingerprint Cards AB, one of Zwipe’s key partners supplying  fingerprint sensors. At Fingerprint Cards he also served as CTO and head of strategy and product management. Mr. Lantto has also held a range of senior executive positions at global ICT company Ericsson.

Kim Humborstad founded Zwipe in 2009 (then OrigoID) and worked as its CEO until February 2018, at which time he transitioned to a new role as  Chief Growth Officer (CGO) at Zwipe. As CGO he is focused on identifying new business and technology integration platforms for Zwipe. Mr. Humborstad is the winner of several awards, including but not limited to FERD-award for highest international potential and FinTech award for innovation in payments. He holds a BS in Innovation and Entrepreneurship from Telemark University College.

Mr. Barak is a seasoned private equity investor and fund manager. He is the CEO of Indigo Global, a capital advisory firm, and serves on the boards of directors of companies active in the technology, natural resources and aviation sectors. He is an Executive Director of Kuang-Chi Science Limited and chairs its international activities, which include investments in technology companies in North America, Europe and Israel. He was formerly MD and Head of International M&A at Israel’s largest financial group, attorney with Skadden Arps in New York and Consultant with The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Mr. Barak holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, an M.A. from Oxford University and B.A. from UCLA.

Francis Van den Bosch serves in several advisory and board roles with start-up companies in the field of technology for the retail banking and payments markets. During the first 15 years of his career he held a number of Sales and Marketing Management roles in the consumer banking sector of Citibank, covering both European and the US markets. He worked as general manager for MasterCard Europe, followed by a global CEO role to set up the global debit POS and ATM system Maestro. Afterwards he headed up a Brussels based company (MCE) that specialized in management development services to international companies.

For the last seven years, Johan Biehl, founder and CEO of Biehl Invest AB, has spent most of his time working as a private investor and trader. In addition, he is a member of the board and Investment Manager at Feat Invest AB. Mr. Biehl is focused on small- and micro-cap investments and today has several investments in listed and unlisted companies predominantly in the tech industry. He also has prior experience as an equity research analyst with Remium Nordic AB covering micro-cap companies and has held several positions in B2B sales and sales management. Mr. Biehl holds a degree in finance from Stockholm University.

Mr. Jones is the former Chief Operating Officer of TSYS Issuer Solutions, a US-based global payment processing company, prior to which he was the Chairman of Paysafe PLC, a UK-based FTSE 250 global payments company. Mr. Jones holds extensive experience in the fintech, payments and payment processing sectors, having held Executive and Board positions in the UK as Chairman of MasterCard UK Ltd and various Executive roles with RBS and NatWest. He also has experience from the US as Director, President and CEO of RBS National Bank and as a Non-Executive Director of Argus Information Services and Kroger Personal Finance. In addition, Mr. Jones worked in China as an Executive Director of the credit card joint venture between RBS and the Bank of China.

 

Following these changes, the new Board of Directors consists of the following members: