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 — 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 is now valued at $5B+.
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.