Rapyd was building toward a bold idea (a single network that could move money across the world's fragmented local payment methods), but in 2018 it was early, global-first, and had no real US product presence. Brought in through ex-PayPal colleagues who introduced me to the founders, I became Rapyd's first Product hire in the United States, based in Mountain View.
The mandate was foundational rather than narrow: stand up the product surfaces that would let Rapyd compete with Stripe, Adyen, and a long tail of local players. That meant a real cross-border network, an issuing capability, US money-movement rails, and a product organization that could ship across three continents. It was the kind of seat where your fingerprints end up all over the stack.
Rather than chase one feature, I built the load-bearing pieces of Rapyd's early platform in parallel, each one a prerequisite for the next stage of the company.
The network didn't start as a network. It started as a single, real partner integration that moved money end-to-end across banks and wallets, proof that the local-methods thesis could actually work in production. That seed integration became the starting point for the Rapyd Global Payments Network (RPGN), which grew to span 60+ alternative payment methods and 1,000+ payment methods worldwide.
Issuing was the second proof point. The Mexico Global Issuing Platform gave gig marketplaces a way to put cards directly in their drivers' hands. Uber and Rappi adopted it to issue driver cards and lower fraud, and the issuer infrastructure then extended into Brazil and South Africa. In parallel, the Evolve Bank & Trust ACH integration gave US clients the domestic on- and off-ramps a cross-border network alone couldn't provide. Running it all was a product org deliberately built across SFO, Tel Aviv, and Singapore, close to the engineering, the banking partners, and the markets at once.
Post-Covid, Rapyd dramatically slowed its global expansion and refocused inside the EU, executing an Icelandic payments acquisition to consolidate there. The early foundations held: the network, issuing, and rails work shipped during those first years became part of the platform Rapyd carried forward, and the company was valued at about $4.5B in its 2025 funding round.
Being the first product hire in a new geography means you don't get to specialize. You build the foundations everything else stands on. The network, the issuing platform, the US rails, and the global team weren't separate projects; they were the load-bearing pieces of a platform that had to exist before Rapyd could be Rapyd. The early rough starts are exactly where that kind of value gets created.