Work

The bet

Exchanges make money when people trade. Krak was a bet that they should also make money when people simply move money, and that a crypto exchange was better placed to do cross-border payments cheaply than the banks and remittance firms already doing it badly.

What it took

The hard part was never the app. It was deciding which markets to treat as real on day one, what the funding and payout paths looked like in each, and which compliance obligations had to be solved before launch rather than after. I owned the operational side of that launch and the commercial case underneath it.

What followed

Krak became the spine of a broader consumer push. A Mastercard debit card followed for UK and European customers, then a metal version, moving the product from transfers into everyday spending. Over the same period Kraken’s funded accounts grew 49% year on year to 5.2 million, and platform assets 89% to $59.3bn.

CryptonewsKraken Launches Peer-to-Peer Crypto Payments AppRead more →

FStechKraken launches crypto debit card for UK and European customersRead more →

The market

FCA research puts crypto ownership at over seven million UK adults, around 12% of the adult population, with both awareness and average holdings rising. The UK is not an emerging market for this any more. It is a competitive one, and the constraint is regulatory permission rather than demand.

What we built

• Authorisation as an Electronic Money Institution by the FCA in March 2025, allowing Kraken to issue e-money and settle deposits and withdrawals faster.
• Sterling payment rails that clear properly with British banks, rather than being tolerated by them.
• A UK offering spanning more than 300 crypto assets, with pricing and onboarding rebuilt around UK customers.

Where it landed

On public exchange data, Kraken’s share of GBP-denominated Bitcoin volume measured against Coinbase moved from roughly 13% in late 2024 to roughly 19% in mid-2026. Sterling is a market Kraken has been in since listing the first major BTC/GBP pair in 2014, so the share was hard-won rather than new.

The Fintech TimesKraken Secures EMI Licence From FCA, With the UK ‘on the Brink of Mass Crypto Adoption’Read more →

The problem

Small businesses on large platforms are creditworthy in ways banks cannot see. They have years of transaction history sitting with the platform, and no way to turn it into working capital. Embedded lending closes that gap, but only if the platform trusts you enough to put you in front of its merchants.

What we did

Platforms of that size do not buy a lending product, they buy an operating commitment. Winning them meant building the integration and servicing story first and the commercial terms second, then holding the operating cadence with Product and Credit Risk that kept volume flowing after signature. Amazon launched a Flexible Financing Line with YouLend for UK sellers, integrated directly into Seller Central.

I ran Europe through that period, built the cross-functional Growth team and the performance framework that came with it, which surfaced more than £10M in commercial and operational improvement.

Where it landed

Revenue grew past 100% year on year during my time, and the partnerships I closed grew to more than 40% of company revenue on a 100% RFP win rate. YouLend has since been named to CNBC’s World’s Top Fintech Companies list two years running.

AmazonAmazon launches flexible financing for small and medium-sized businessesRead more →

FF NewsYouLend Reaches 370,000 Businesses Funded, Delivering Profitable Growth Built to LastRead more →