Open banking platform Yapily has appointed former Plaid Senior legal counsel, Marc Kuzak as Vice President of Legal, to lead the company’s legal function and work closely with the product team to deliver new products that meet the diverse regulatory requirements of Yapily’s growing European client base. 

Marc has over 15 years of experience working in the fast-growing B2B fintech environment, with leading law firms and large financial institutions, including Barclays where he was the Head of Legal for Barclays UK Ventures and advised on its response to PSD2. He joins Yapily from Plaid where he held the position of Senior International and UK Lead Counsel. 

In addition to leading the legal function, Marc will work with the product team at Yapily, who has a robust list of UK customers including Zilch, Intuit Quickbooks, and Tide. Marc will advise on regulatory aspects of product development and implement improvements to the entire contract lifecycle process. He will report to Yapily’s Chief Legal officer, Selene Brett. 

Marc Kuzak, VP of Legal at Yapily, commented: “We are still at the beginning of the open banking journey, and I believe the next few years will see a steady increase in adoption and a maturing of the ecosystem, supporting more useful and sophisticated use cases and creating genuine value for consumers. As a leader in the open banking space and with a best-in-class technology platform, Yapily is perfectly positioned to support this trend and the transition from open banking to open finance, and ultimately open data more broadly.” 

He continues, “I am delighted to join a team that is combining cutting-edge technology with a genuine human mission to create a global open economy that works for everyone. I look forward to working with the Yapily team, as well as its partners and customers in large financial institutions through to smaller fintechs, to create new compliant products at pace and at scale.” 

Stefano Vaccino, Founder and CEO at Yapily, added: “We are very pleased Marc is joining Yapily to lead our legal function. With his diverse experience working with both larger financial institutions and fintechs, he has a deep understanding of the drivers and challenges that these organisations face in pursuing open banking. And we look forward to working with him to solve more of these challenges and support our growth in the UK and wider European markets.” 

The appointment follows the announcement of Lisa Gutu as Vice President of Sales, Europe in March, who previously held the positions of VP of Business Development for Trovata and COO of Salt Edge.