WalletConnect Recruits Checkout.com Veteran Riaz Bordie to Take Crypto Payments Mainstream

WalletConnect, a company that enables businesses to accept crypto and stablecoin payments, has appointed Riaz Bordie, a former Checkout.com and SumUp, as its chief technology officer.

Bordie will drive the technical development of WalletConnect Pay, the company’s payment method that allows the acceptance of crypto and stablecoin payments on a widely adopted wallet network, and the integration of that product into existing payment service provider (PSP) payment stacks, the company said in a press release emailed to PYMNTS.

“Riaz’s experience building payment infrastructure for PSPs, allowing merchants to accept crypto payments, makes him an ideal addition to our team,” WalletConnect CEO Jess Houlgrave said in the release. “His deep knowledge of PSPs and the ecosystem will be instrumental as we work to make crypto and stablecoin payments seamless and accessible for providers, merchants and their customers worldwide.”

When Bordie served as vice president of engineering at SumUp, he drove the development of payment products for merchants and strengthened the platform’s ability to support international expansion, according to the release.

Before that, Bordie served as CTO and senior vice president of engineering at Checkout.com and helped scale that company’s global payments infrastructure and merchant core services, per the release.

“I’m incredibly excited to join the WalletConnect team at a pivotal moment for crypto and stablecoin payments,” Bordie said in the release. “WalletConnect Pay represents a transformative step in bringing seamless, secure wallet-native payments to users and merchants worldwide.”

WalletConnect Pay is designed to shield merchants and payments companies from the complexity of crypto payments, Houlgrave told PYMNTS in an interview posted in January.

The company positions itself as an orchestration layer that handles compliance, sanctions screening and off-ramping.

“The payments company and the merchant shouldn’t even need to know about any of this stuff,” Houlgrave said. “They should just be able to serve this as an offering.”

WalletConnect and payment acceptance and services firm Ingenico announced in January that Ingenico will soon integrate WalletConnect Pay to allow merchants to accept supported stablecoins.

The companies said at the time in a press release that this integration will give merchants’ customers additional payment options and convenience during purchases.