Geidea, the largest fintech company in Saudi Arabia by market share, has appointed the global financial services and fintech heavyweight Nick Ogden to join its Board of Directors.
In his role on the Board, Nick Ogden will be responsible for guiding the company’s strategic vision as it seeks to position itself as the category-defining fintech in Saudi Arabia. With his wealth of expertise and knowledge in the payments, e-commerce and rapidly-evolving regulatory space, he will be an invaluable addition to the company as it continues to expand across the region and broaden its payment solutions.
Nick is a serial entrepreneur in banking, payments and fintech, with over 30 years of experience in the business. His entrepreneurial success can be traced all the way back to 1994, when he pioneered e-commerce, inventing the first online shop, the Wine Warehouse.
Nick has also founded several major names in financial services, including the original Challenger Bank Cashflows and Europe´s largest global payment processing company Worldpay. He then went onto launch ClearBank, the UK’s first clearing bank to launch in more than 250 years, something which Nick founded to deliver a new level of open competition and transparency to the UK financial services marketplace. More recently, driven by his passion to deliver greater transparency and frictionless financial services, Nick founded RTGS.global, the world’s first real-time liquidity network.
Nick is the recipient of a number of industry awards, including the UK Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, The EPA 2017 Payments Industry Contributor of the Year Award and the 2017 Banking Technology Tech Leadership Award. In 2019, Nick was selected as one of the World’s Top 50 Innovators. Nick is also non-executive chairman, of ING-backed Funding Options, and a non-executive director of Visa-backed ShieldPay.
Abdullah Al-Othman, Founder and Chairman of Geidea, said: “We are excited to bring Nick on board to the Geidea family. With his wealth of expertise and knowledge in the payments, e-commerce and rapidly evolving regulatory space, he will be an invaluable addition to the company as we continue to expand across the region and broaden Geidea´s payment solutions. We are keen to add Nick´s diverse perspective to the way that we approach our business, leveraging his global insights and adapting them to the markets that we operate in.”
Commenting on his appointment, Nick Ogden said: “I am delighted to be joining Geidea at such a pivotal stage in its growth and expansion. Geidea is a dynamic organization that has already made a significant mark on the fintech landscape. Having personally founded several successful companies, I know the team at Geidea shares my values of placing innovation and passion at the heart of business strategy. I look forward to seeing and helping drive the next stage in its growth across the MENA region and beyond.”
