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Meet The Founder of OpenPayd : Dr Ozan Özerk

A resilient innovator with a passion for disrupting corporate banking and payment service providers, Dr Ozan Özerk believes in the power of finances through digitization. Considering it an opportunity to make financial services more accessible and affordable for everyone, he founded OpenPayd in 2018.

Dedicated to improving access to and quality of the banking services available to businesses, OpenPayd simplifies payments and banking on a global basis and empowers businesses to grow. Named one of the Most Influential FinTech Companies of 2020 by The Financial Technologist, the company continues to be a trailblazer in the fintech industry amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.

A Glimpse Into His Early Life

Meet The Founder of OpenPayd : Dr Ozan Özerk
Dr Ozan Özerk

Born in 1979 to parents Kamil Özerk and Meral R. Özerk, Dr Ozan Özerk is of Turkish-Cypriot descent. He moved to Norway from Cyrus at a young age, where he completed his high school education at Nordstrand Videregående Skole. He served in the Norwegian Armed Forces after finishing school, as a Ranger from 1999 to 2000 and later in the Norwegian Home Guard’s Rapid Response Unit.

From a family of academics, his father a professor at the Department of Education in the University of Oslo and his mother a senior advisor at Statped who had specialized in children with learning disabilities, Dr Özerk studied medicine at the University of Oslo from 2000 to 2008 after his military tenure. After graduation, he completed his medical internship at Narvik Hospital becoming a Medical Doctor.

His Career Shift to Fintech

Dr Ozan Özerk’s entrepreneurial journey began in the late 1990s, but it was co-founding Norsk Ideutvikling in 2005 that truly kick-started his career. He made the shift to his current career in the fintech industry in 2015. Dr Ozan Özerk has had significant exposure to FinTech since, building a number of global businesses including the online trading platform EuroTrader, European Merchant Bank, InvestAlgo, SettleGo, and Ozan SuperApp. Several of these early ventures enabled him to discover and learn about the fintech industry, which led to the founding of OpenPayd, a well-known brand in the fintech space today.

Sharing his thoughts on the struggles of entrepreneurism, he said, “In the entrepreneurial world, everyone likes talking about success stories, but I am more interested in people’s failures. I think that is where true learning is. A great failure means you’re thinking big, and your level of ambition gets credit even if you ended up failing. I think that’s a much healthier view on failure, as it inspires future attempts at getting it right.”

“If you truly want to succeed you need to be determined and put in the work. There is no easy way, there are no shortcuts. If you cut corners, I promise you you’ll be more broke, isolated, and unhappy than before you started.”

His Vision for the Future

A pioneer in the industry, Dr Ozan Özerk believes that OpenPayd is poised to lead a technological revolution and capture the momentum of the industry. Prioritising transparency and expertise, OpenPayd is passionate about providing businesses with easy access to banking and payment solutions to help them expand internationally. Based in London, with offices in Malta, Turkey, Bulgaria, Amsterdam, Singapore, Hong Kong and Brazil, they have had several notable successes, including assisting innovative fintech to expand worldwide.

A frequent contributor to interviews and opinion pieces focused on the future of fintech, Dr Ozan Özerk has a strong standpoint on issues regarding financial inclusion and equality. You can read more here: Learn more about Dr. Ozan Özerk

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