The ai Corporation (ai) an FCA approved expert in payments, fraud and risk management, today announced the appointment of Robin Whitehead, David Gilhespy and Natasha Westover, as Chief Technology Officer, Chief Operations Officer and Finance Director, respectively.

Today’s strategic hires build on ai’s 2017 acquisition of the fuel card processor, SmartCentric, and come at a time when ai is experiencing consistent and significant growth. In 2017, ai continued its double-digit growth track record, with a 50% increase in normalised revenue year on year.

ai’s fuel card processing solutions cover over 15 million B2B active cards over 45 countries, in over 200,000 sites and 90+ product types. Its existing payments and fraud portfolio also cover over 100 banks, protecting three million multi-channel merchants and over 300 million consumer cardholders, across the globe.

“I’m pleased to say we’re positively impacting our industry, from both a client success and technological innovation perspective. We take customers from where they are, to where they want to go, and we work side-by-side with our partners to simplify their approach and drive business success,” said Dr Mark Goldspink, CEO of ai.

“Our business is growing and we’re on our way to becoming one of the most recognized brands in the machine learning, payment, fraud and risk management space. Building out the team to strengthen our brand globally with the additions of Robin, David and Natasha, drives our business forward and will further cement our ability to provide an end to end solution, that enables real-time card management, with real-time fraud prevention.”

As CTO, Robin Whitehead will head the company’s data science, technology and engineering teams, underpinning its solutions, with the latest machine learning techniques and technology. He will be responsible for continued growth and innovation of ai’s core technology platforms. Whitehead was most recently ai’s Development Director. Prior to that, he held executive positions at PayVector.

“I’m excited to be appointed as ai’s CTO at such a pivotal time in the business’s history, and to help ensure the company’s legacy of enhanced payment, fraud and risk management solutions continue to thrive,” said Robin Whitehead. “I’ve dedicated my career to ensuring end customers are able to succeed by simplifying their omni-channel payments processes, while stopping fraud at source.”

David Gilhespy will be responsible for managing and overseeing ai’s global operations. As Chief Operations Officer, Gilhespy will focus on growing the footprint of ai’s international business and continuing the company’s mission to simplify the complexities of omni-channel payments and fraud prevention.

As Financial Director, Natasha Westover will support ai’s CEO, Dr Mark Goldspink, its commercial directors and senior management team regarding financial strategy, accounting, budgeting and financial reporting and management relating to ai and its subsidiaries.