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 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 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.”
