BitPay hires Visa executive as Chief Compliance Officer

Coindesk reports that BitPay has brought on Tim Byun, a former Visa executive, as Chief Compliance Officer.

Byun previously served as Visa's anti-Money Laundering Money Laundering Money laundering is a blanket term to describe the process by which criminals disguise the original ownership and proceeds of criminal conduct by making such proceeds appear to be derived from a legitimate source.Money laundering is an issue that traverses countless industries and sectors, which includes the financial services space. Though criminal money may be successfully laundered without the assistance of the financial sector, billions of dollars’ worth of criminally derived money are laund Money laundering is a blanket term to describe the process by which criminals disguise the original ownership and proceeds of criminal conduct by making such proceeds appear to be derived from a legitimate source.Money laundering is an issue that traverses countless industries and sectors, which includes the financial services space. Though criminal money may be successfully laundered without the assistance of the financial sector, billions of dollars’ worth of criminally derived money are laund Read this Term and anti-terrorist financing officer. He also held previous positions at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

BitPay's executive chairman Tony Gallippi positioned the hiring as a move that further demonstrates to U.S. regulators that it is serious about meeting compliance expectations:

“As the Bitcoin Bitcoin While some may still be wondering what is Bitcoin, who created Bitcoin, or how does Bitcoin work, one thing is certain: Bitcoin has changed the world.No one can remain indifferent to this revolutionary, decentralized, digital asset nor to its blockchain technology.In fact, we’ve gone a long way ever since a Florida resident Laszlo Hanyecz made BTC’s first official commercial transaction with a real company by trading 10,000 Bitcoins for 2 pizzas at his local Papa John’s.One could now argue that While some may still be wondering what is Bitcoin, who created Bitcoin, or how does Bitcoin work, one thing is certain: Bitcoin has changed the world.No one can remain indifferent to this revolutionary, decentralized, digital asset nor to its blockchain technology.In fact, we’ve gone a long way ever since a Florida resident Laszlo Hanyecz made BTC’s first official commercial transaction with a real company by trading 10,000 Bitcoins for 2 pizzas at his local Papa John’s.One could now argue that Read this Term industry continues to grow, BitPay wants to ensure that our policies and procedures fall inline with various state, federal and international regulations. For this reason, we hired Tim to set up and maintain our compliance structure.”

He is the latest addition in BitPay's recent hiring spree. They reportedly have 40 employees. With their most recent round of funding, they plan to add another 70.

Byun joins other figures who in recent months have departed prominent companies to join the Bitcoin fold. Two weeks ago, Facebook's Ben Davenport joined BitGo as "head of product and co-founder". In March, Ryan McGeehan left Facebook and joined Coinbase to help build their security program.

Byun, however, seems to be transferring between two very different worlds. Visa, the world's biggest payment processor, is technically a direct competitor with Bitcoin. Visa CEO Charlie Scharf, however, didn't perceive any threat from Bitcoin at allwhen he said, “People talk about things like frictionless and things like that, and when you actually dig through it, it’s really not the case. We feel very comfortable with the business that we have here.”