California-based provider of blockchain-powered payment solutions Ripple made two changes in its management team on Wednesday, appointing former Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) payment executive Kahina Van Dyke as senior vice president (SVP) of business and corporate development and transferring Ripple’s chief cryptographer David Schwartz to the position of chief technology officer (CTO).
Ripple’ CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced the changes in a blog post on Wednesday.
“David is a world renowned leader in the blockchain and digital asset world, and Kahina is a seasoned veteran in the traditional banking and financial services industries,” Garlinghouse explained.
From January 2016 till June this year, Van Dyke was Facebook global director of financial services and payments partnerships. Before that, she worked six years for MasterCard at top management positions, including global head and senior vice president for global initiatives. In 2006-2009 Van Dyke was Citibank SVP of product management and business development for Europe and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
“Companies like Facebook have improved access to services, digitized payment flows and made it quicker and easier for people to transact with each other domestically. Now we need a new global technology solution for international payments that offers interoperability with existing systems, connecting them and leveraging their value,” Van Dyke said in interview for Ripple’s blog.
Another important management change on Wednesday was the promotion of Ripple’s chief cryptographer Schwartz to CTO to succeed Stefan Thomas who resigned to launch his own crypto project.
“As CTO, I’ll get to lead a world-class group of engineers, scientists and business executives, which is what makes coming to work every day so exciting. I’m looking forward to the challenge,” Schwartz said.
As CTO, Schwartz is responsible for the further development of Ripple’s products - xCurrent which targets financial institutions, providing them with blockchain-based solutions for easier and cheaper banking payments, xRapid, which leverages the technology behind the XRP digital asset to speed up cross-border payments, and the xVia API solution.
XRP is the third largest cryptocurrency with more than $17 billion market capitalization presently.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
