Valerie Soranno Keating bolsters senior team of UK start-up aiming to transform global payments market

Valerie Soranno Keating, CEO of Barclaycard for six years, has joined the board of London-based payments start-up APEXX as Non-Executive Director.

Soranno Keating, dubbed the ‘queen of cards’¹, led Barclaycard’s global business between 2009-2015, tripling profits and growing revenues by 45%. Previously, she held a number of executive positions at American Express for over 16 years.

APEXX is creating a transparent marketplace where merchants can browse and plug in to competing services from a network of acquirers and payment brands across the world.

Valerie Soranno Keating, board director APEXX said, “The potential of APEXX is what has me most excited. The company has created an innovative platform that can save merchants millions of pounds and removes much of the complexity of managing payments. The market desperately needs more transparency and competition and this could change global payments for the better.”

Using the APEXX platform, merchants can see how costs compare and get expert advice on the payment providers that will best suit them. It can save merchants upwards of 15% on the cost of processing credit or debit card payments and alternative payments.

For many merchants, this equates to millions of pounds and the cost of payments continues to rise: the latest figures show that the volume of non-cash payments is growing by 10.1% every year, with more than 426 billion global transactions annually².

Rodney Bain, co-founder and MD of APEXX said, “APEXX already has global customers, global partners and global ambitions. We now have a globally recognised payments leader on our team, with a proven track-record in scaling new innovations. This will undoubtedly accelerate our growth.”

Per Bjorgas, Chairman of APEXX said, “On behalf of the Board, I am delighted Val is joining the Board of APEXX which will further strengthen our management team as we bring our platform to market. Having someone of Val’s undoubted stature join APEXX is a real vote of confidence in what the team has built and we look forward to working with Val to shake up the payments industry and give Merchants better service and value.”

APEXX is privately funded and is currently in discussion with a number of private equity partners.