RS2, one of the leading providers of payment processing services in Europe and Asia Pacific is  entering the North American market. Extending its reach to the largest payment processing market in the world supports both RS2's and its customers' growth ambitions.

Its highly differentiated BankWORKS platform is now available in North America and relevant to entities across the payments ecosystem including, ISOs, banks, Payment Facilitators and merchants.

RS2 North America has announced the formation of its North American board with seven key appointments: Osama Bedier, OB Rowls, Souheil Badran, Kai Schmitz, Radi El Haj, Mario Schembri and John Elkins who will serve as Chairman.

The board will work closely with the Executive team as it enters the North American market and scales the business. RS2 Software believes that it has a significant opportunity in North America, given its unique payment processing platform that is global, truly omnichannel, highly flexible and configurable and feature rich.

"We are thrilled and honored to have attracted very respected thought leaders in the payment and Fintech industry to our board. We consider this as an endorsement for the opportunity ahead" says Daniela Mielke, CEO of RS2 Software North America.

Osama Bedier is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Poynt, which develops and markets credit card processing terminals for small businesses. Mr Bedier also serves on the Boards of QIWI, VEON and PayRange.

Before founding Poynt, Mr. Bedier served as the Vice President of Payments at Google, where he created Google Wallet. He also ran product and engineering at PayPal. O.B. Rawls is the Strategic Advisor to the CEO of Paysafe. Prior to this role, O.B. was the CEO and President of iPayment and served as the Senior Vice President and General Manager, Partner Solutions, First Data. His expansive career also includes executive leadership roles with Hypercom,  Caredata, Unified Merchant Services and Bank of America. Mr. Rawls also serves on the boards of Appetizer.

Souheil Badran served as President of Alipay, Americas and was responsible for driving the expansion of Alipay, one of the world's leading digital payment and lifestyle platforms. Prior to his executive leadership role with Alipay, Souheil served as President and CEO of Edo Interactive. His career also includes executive roles at Digital River, First Data Corporation, and VeriSign.

Mr Badran serves on the Presidential Advisory Council of the Electronic Transactions Association and the Board of the Children's Cancer Research Fund Kai Schmitz leads !FC's Fintech investments in Latin America and Africa. Before joining IFC, Kai led the Remittance Team at the Payment Systems Development Group of the World Bank where he

was advising governments, central banks and multilateral organizations on payment system regulation and policy.

Amongst other things he led the groups advisory work with the G20 on market and regulatory issues. Previously, Mr Schmitz co-founded and later became Executive Vice President and COO of MFIC, a financial service provider in the US.

Radi El Haj is the CEO of RS2 Software. Mr El Haj joined RS2 in 1997 as a Project Manager and was appointed Chief Executive Office in January 2012. Under his leadership, RS2 diversified into managed services and globalized its footprint Mr Schembri is the Chairman of RS2 Software Plc. Before joining RS2 in 1999 as a regional manager Mr Schembri had more than 25 years of experience in the banking industry. He was the CEO of RS2 Software Plc from 2008 to 2012.

John Elkins currently serves on the boards of FINCA International, ELATERAL Ltd. TRAVELEX INC. and RS2 Software P.L.C. John retired as President, International Regions from First Data in June 2015. A global leader in electronic payments with operations in 35 countries, John had full P&L responsibility for over 8,000 employees and all markets outside of the United States. Between 2002-7 he served as Executive VP and Global CMO for Visa International. John was the founder, former Chairman and CEO of FutureBrand, built from a start up into one of the leading worldwide corporate brand and design consultancies.

Daniela Mielke is the CEO of RS2 Software North America. In prior roles, Daniela served as the Chief Strategy and Product Officer of Vantiv (now Worldpayl, VP of Strategy at Paypal and SVP of Global Strategy at Visa International. She started her career with Nestle and McKinsey. Daniela also serves on the Board of FINCA International.