About Javier Perez

An angel investor and venture capital mentor, Javier Perez founded Global PayTech Ventures to invest in ground-breaking paytech solutions designed to improve the way the world transfers value.

Formerly CEO of MasterCard Europe and member of Mastercard’s global management team, Mr. Perez has an extensive and successful track record in new business development, mergers and acquisitions and global strategy. Mr. Perez is an expert at developing innovative PayTech concepts and bringing them to market.

Nearly two decades ago, Mr. Perez helped merge Mastercard with Europay, thereby integrating two large players in the payments business and taking the new entity to IPO. Since its initial valuation of $4B at IPO, Mastercard has increased to more than $350B – possibly the most successful Fintech IPO to date.

During Mr. Perez’s tenure as President of Mastercard, Europe:
* Europe has become the largest region for Mastercard, leading the European market ahead of Visa and AMEX.
* Europe has become the center of innovative payment solutions with the establishment of Mastercard Global Labs in Ireland.
* Mastercard has become the leading European provider of ACH payment applications through its acquisition of Vocalink (in the UK), the leading instant payment and open banking platform globally and Nets and more than 10 other companies from cybersecurity to data and open banking.
* Company revenue has multiplied by 30 times.
* More than 200 startups have been supported via ‘Start Path’ – Mastercard’s global effort to support innovative early stage companies.

Mr. Perez has mentored many young startups and brought three to IPO.

Under Mr. Perez’s leadership, Mastercard Europe has been recognized as the innovation leader in Payments Technology in the region and is the only payment system formally declared systemically important by the European Central Bank.

Prior to Mastercard, Mr. Perez held numerous bank leadership roles. He ran Visa’s EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa) office as Head of Business Development in London for a brief term before the Spanish government asked him, in the mid 90’s, to help coordinate and execute the rescue of Spain’s government-owned financial institutions.

Mr. Perez has served on numerous boards of banks, universities and insurance companies.