Thunes Picks Former Worldpay Exec Floris de Kort as CEO

Cross-border B2B payments firm Thunes has named a new chief executive.

Floris de Kort, a veteran of companies such as Worldpay, has been chosen as the Singapore-based company’s CEO. He replaces Peter De Caluwe, who has been promoted to deputy chairman, Thunes said in a Tuesday (Jan. 9) news release.

“Many years ago, in different companies, I used to compete with Floris,” De Caluwe said. “I am pleased to team up with him now, combining our skills to better position Thunes as the market leader.”

De Kort served as CEO of global eCommerce at Worldpay, helping take that company public in 2015. In 2019, he became CEO of payments company TSG, the release said, overseeing its merger with payment processor Clearent to form Xplor Technologies.

“I’m delighted to join Thunes as CEO to scale and accelerate growth,” de Kort said. “We are laser-focused on helping our customers create opportunities for cross-border payments across emerging markets and segments. There’s clear potential, and we have the right people, culture and strategy in place to be extremely successful.”

The announcement follows a string of funding announcements by Thunes, including a July 2023 fundraise that brought in $72 million.

Weeks earlier, the company announced it had raised $60 million and marked several milestones: quadrupling the reach of its mobile wallet network to 3 billion accounts since 2021, connecting 4 billion bank accounts worldwide and processing roughly $50 billion worth of transactions, 90% of which are instant.

PYMNTS looked at the challenges and opportunities in the cross-border payment space last week, noting that removing friction from these transactions is key to fueling global growth. 

“For businesses that increasingly expect a B2B payment experience mirroring the convenience available in consumer transactions, unmet behavioral expectations around streamlined cross-border payments are beginning to track those already met around the ease of settlement within domestic markets,” that report said.

However, while the technology may be there, making cross-border payments faster and more secure will require a giant leap forward this year, as these payments inherently have more points of failure when put up against their domestic counterparts.

“Compliance is an ever-present issue, with local anti-money laundering (AML), know your customer (KYC) policies and sanctions screenings needing to be addressed for each individual region,” PYMNTS wrote. Lag times and the threat of fraud also create bottlenecks, and foreign exchange (FX) rates raise their own obstacles.”