TWINT, Switzerland’y has now appointed Markus Kilb as its new CEO to replace Thierry Kneissler.

Markus Kilb, previously head of Unicredit Family Financing Bank in Germany, is an expert in customer-facing credit card business and in digital transformation within the fintech sector.

Thierry Kneissler, who since 2014 has turned TWINT from a start-up company into the most efficient and widely used payment app in Switzerland, will help with the change of leadership and then act as a freelance consultant. The change in leadership will take place during the fourth quarter of 2018.

The new CEO will take over management of the most widely used mobile payment app in Switzerland. A little over a year after its launch TWINT now has over 850,000 registered users, while the number TWINT transactions is rising constantly. TWINT expects this growth to continue and to sign up its millionth user this year.

Søren Mose, Chairman of TWINT says,

“I’m very pleased that we’ve been able to appoint Markus Kilb as our new CEO; as a manager he has great experience in customer business with digital financial products. TWINT has come of age, is growing continuously in terms of both users and transactions, and is preparing for the next step up as Switzerland’s mobile payment system. We’re care-fully preparing some new areas of application and will introduce these to the market in line with customer needs.”

Markus Kilb has led the Munich-based Unicredit Family Financing Bank, which as part of the Unicredit Group is active all over Germany, since 2009. He has opened up new distribution channels for the bank and has great experience in digitalization within the fintech sector.

Kilb, 52, began working for Unicredit as Marketing Director in 2004. Prior to this, he was head of credit card business at Citibank in Düssel-dorf, Advance Bank in Munich and at BMW Financial Services.

Markus Kilb, TWINT’s new CEO says,

“TWINT is a very versatile mobile payment system that has a much wider range of applications than other systems and so can cover a wide variety of customer needs. I look forward to managing a company with such an exciting future ahead of it. One important job will be to highlight and expand benefits for users.”

Kilb replaces Thierry Kneissler, who co-founded TWINT in 2014 as a spin-off of PostFinance, merged it with Paymit in 2016, and since then has established it as the Swiss banks’ leading mobile payment system. He explains his reasons for leaving TWINT as follows:

“The last four years have been a once in a lifetime experience for me: developing complex systems, founding a company, merging it with Paymit and then re-launching with all the Swiss banks. I have loved working on this start-up phase, but the further development of the business requires other skills, which is why I’m pleased to be handing over the job to Markus Kilb.”

Thierry Kneissler is keen to keep sharing his experience and expertise as a consultant and board member. He will leave the company once the introduction of the new CEO is complete.

Søren Mose adds,

“I would like to thank Thierry Kneissler for all his hard work building up TWINT. The firm he started with four employees has grown into a company of 60 specialists. It is the number one mobile payment system in Switzerland and will soon have a million registered users. I’m pleased that we’ll still be able to count on Thierry’s know-how on a project-by-project basis.”

Featured image via Freepik