Pelican, a global provider of Artificial Intelligence powered payments and financial crime compliance solutions for banks and corporates, today announced the expansion of its North American operations with the appointment of financial services and technology industry expert John Keelan. John joins the team as Senior Sales Manager for the Americas region, reporting to Bill North, Pelican’s Global Head of Sales.

John Keelan has over twenty years expertise in selling mission-critical technology solutions for Fortune 500 companies, mostly recently with IBM, where he was the leading sales executive for financial services for IBM Watson Customer Engagement. John has extensive experience with AI and cognitive computing, along with many years domain experience working in treasury services with major global banks, including Northern Trust, US Bank, BNP, Commerce Bank, Credit Suisse and others.

Parth Desai, founder and CEO of Pelican, commented: “The deep domain knowledge John possesses in leveraging the unique capabilities of AI technology to enhance and optimize payments services and treasury processes will be a strong asset to Pelican and our customers. With the Federal Reserve actively promoting the adoption of instant payments to the American banking market – it’s an exciting time for John to join the growing Pelican team in North America. As well as serving existing customers in the U.S. and Canada, he will be responsible for helping us grow our business in these markets and across the wider region.”

John Keelan commented: “I am delighted to be joining the Pelican team. I have long been impressed with Pelican’s wide range of payments and compliance solutions, and specifically how Pelican has developed and enabled AI technologies to streamline, enhance and secure the payments lifecycle. I look forward to the opportunities that working within a dynamic and innovative firm like Pelican presents.” 

Pelican has pioneered the practical application of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) disciplines of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning for global payments processing and financial crime compliance for over 20 years. Pelican has offices in New York, London, Amsterdam, Mumbai, Dubai and Hong Kong.