Valeri Valtchev is co-founder and chief executive of Paynetics, a Sofia e-money institution that provides payment accounts, card issuing, acquiring, and BIN sponsorship to fintechs and companies across Europe. He co-founded it with Ivo Gueorguiev, who is chairman.
From Law to Business
Valtchev began his career as a lawyer at White & Case, the international law firm. He left law to build companies, and over the following decades he founded, bought, and scaled 15 businesses across seven sectors. Five of them became market leaders in their field, and six were sold.
Building Paynetics
Paynetics won its e-money license from the Bulgarian National Bank in April 2016 and passported it across the European Union, and it is also authorized in the UK. Under Valtchev it built a broad set of services: payment accounts, card issuing, acquiring, open banking, white-label apps, and BIN sponsorship for program managers. It bought Phyre, a white-label banking front end, to speed up client launches.
Clients and partners include Trading 212, Vivacom, TBI Bank, and Weavr. Paynetics was the first Bulgarian financial institution to offer Apple Pay, and in 2020 it raised €2.5 million from New Vision 3 Fund and Bulgarian American Credit Bank. It competes with Wallester and Enfuce.
Valtchev has surrounded himself with people who know regulation from the inside. The company’s legal lead is a former chief legal counsel of the Bulgarian National Bank, and Paynetics now runs offices in Sofia, London, and Paris to serve clients that want to embed accounts and cards in their own products.
A Seat at the Table
In January 2025 Paynetics joined the European Payments Council, which manages the euro payment schemes. Paynetics joined to help shape how the payments ecosystem develops.
