Primary Job Title Founder & CEO Primary Organization myGini, Inc.
Location San Francisco, California, United States Regions San Francisco Bay Area, West Coast, Western US Gender Male
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Mehmet Sezgin is a global retail banking and payments expert. After working professionally in executive roles for 30 years, he set up his own payments company myGini, Inc in San Francisco California in May 2016. myGini is a payment and card management application designed to connect merchants and consumers with their financial institutions via
MasterCard/Visa payments networks.
When he was the director of Global Payment Systems at BBVA (Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria) between 2012 and 2016, he was able to move the card base from 67 to 80 million while doubling the merchant base to 1.4 million generating $115 billion purchase volume at 13 countries (Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Romania, USA, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay, Colombia, and Venezuela). A firm believer in new technologies, he launched a global digital app called BBVAWallet. It was launched in Spain, Chile, Mexico, USA, Turkey, Colombia and Peru with downloads now reaching more than 20 million. BBVAWallet was first in the world to introduce HCE (contactless) payments and card controls like temporary on and off.
Before BBVA, Mehmet was the founder/CEO of Garanti Payment Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Garanti Bank Turkey. Mehmet launched the country’s first chip cards in 2000 and created a loyalty platform called bonus card. Bonus card introduced contactless payments in Europe in 2006. Under his leadership, Garanti moved from 700 thousand cards and 25 thousand POS terminals to 20 million cards and to 600 thousand POS terminals while building the biggest e-commerce platform in Turkey. Garanti is now within the top 5 largest credit card issuers in Europe based on the purchase volume. Meanwhile bonus card became a household name and was licensed to 10 other banks. He also launched a co-branding card program with Turkish Airlines and brought Amex, Discover and China UnionPay to Turkey.
Before establishing Garanti Payment Systems, Mehmet opened the Eurasia Office of MasterCard Europe after working in several banks in different capacities. He started his career as a consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
He had been a long time board member of MasterCard Europe and Interbank Card Association (BKM). Mehmet also served as the chairman of Credit Bureau in Turkey and was the chairman of Risk Centralization Platform at Bankers’ Association.
Mehmet holds an MBA from the University of Massachusetts which he earned with a Fulbright scholarship and Bachelor of Science in management from METU. He attended GE’s BMS program in Crotonville NY and IMD in Lausanne.
As he loves reading books he just finished his book on management with the story of bonus card; Book of Bonus. He is proud of his two sons' film and music careers and still competes with one of them on a tennis court.
