Market-leading Turkish fintech Papara has appointed Ziya Uçar, Founding Member of Istanbul Police Department's Anti-Cyber Crime Branch as Corporate Relations Director for cybersecurity. He will be responsible for implementing and managing intrusion detection and preventative controls against cybercrime at the fintech. 

Papara is a Financial SuperApp offering instant, free, multi-currency transfers to consumers as well as providing a one-stop shop for paying bills, trading digital currencies and tracking spending habits. It also facilitates mass-payment for businesses, offers a corporate card which can be tailored to facilitate varying spending patterns and enables a secure check-out option for merchants. Targeting the underbanked and underserved, Papara has grown since launch in Tukey in 2016 to become Turkey’s largest fintech company with a current customer base of over six million registered users.

Uçar joins Papara’s experienced senior team, led by serial entrepreneur and Papara founder Ahmed Karslı, and payments expert İlker Diker. Uçar recently retired from his position as Chief of the Anti-Illegal Betting Bureau of the Istanbul Police Department's Anti-Cyber Crimes Branch. His career in the cybercrime industry dates back beyond 2004, when he worked at the Department of Payment Systems Bureau carrying out bank, credit card and general money transfer fraud investigations. More recently, between 2017 and 2019, Uçar was Technical Follow-up Bureau Chief, responsible for digital forensics, identifying, evaluating, and reporting on cyber security risks. At Papara, Uçar will be accountable for the security of Papara’s six million user accounts and overseeing the fraud prevention and detection controls in place.

Papara’s heavy investment into insight and innovation has driven high top and bottom line growth for the business, testament to its success in the Turkish market. Having grown its userbase by 109% in 2020, adding over 330,000 new users each month, Papara is readying itself for roll out across Europe, focusing on countries housing large Turkish communities such as Germany and Austria.

Launching new, user-friendly and time efficient products on a regular basis, from free 24/7 money transfers both in-app and directly to an IBAN, to currency exchange platforms, as well as intuitive budget management tools and splitting expenditures features, user experience is the differentiator for Papara. Investment into this, as well as into top talent in the cyber space through Uçar’s appointment is helping Papara scale up and achieve its goal of becoming the largest neo-bank in Europe.

Ahmed F. Karslı, founder and CEO of Papara comments on Ziya Uçar’s appointment: “The pandemic drove a fourfold volume increase in online payments last year, and with that came a spike in cybercrime. With security at the forefront of everything we do, our customers have not been impacted by this – we’re proud to have fraud rates of less than 0.01 per cent.

“As we grow and expand rapidly into the West, maintaining our strong security track record is of utmost importance, and the appointment of Ziya demonstrates our latest commitment to fighting cybercrime as well as preparing for our ambitious growth targets.”

Ziya Uçar, Corporate Relations Director (cybersecurity department) comments: “Joining the Papara team is a pivotal moment for me – I look forward to leveraging my three decades’ experience in the Police Department fighting cybercrime in the private sphere under article 5549, and using my expertise in cyber law enforcement to protect our customers from future security risks as we head west to take on Europe’s largest fintech players.”