Three Seats at the Payments Table, with Oded Salomy

A taxi-cab startup unexpectedly opened the door to payments #

Oded Salomy, founder of Paywise Network and formerly Visa’s first employee in Israel and the Bank of Israel’s chief payments regulator, didn’t initially set out to work in payments. However, in the early 2000s, he co-founded a startup installing payment terminals in New York taxi cabs.  At that time, $1.4 billion in cash flowed through NYC taxi rides annually, according to his account. This experience became his crash course, attracting investment interest from Visa, Mastercard, and American Express even before mobile payments existed.

Salomy took a significant pay cut to join a central bank #

After building a career at Visa and a previous stint at a Wall Street law firm, Salomy responded to a newspaper ad seeking someone to lead payments at the Bank of Israel.  He accepted a roughly 90% pay cut for this role. Oded explains that he always wanted to return to his homeland and prioritised personal impact over financial logic. This decision led to four and a half years of oversight of Israel’s RTGS system, check clearing, and digital shekel committee.

Visa initially resisted account-to-account payments but eventually bought in #

Salomy’s experience on both sides of the card network industry provides a clear case study. He explains that card networks understood that A2A payments were cheaper for merchants but had every financial incentive to resist promoting them. However, regulatory momentum eventually made resistance futile. Visa and Mastercard eventually pivoted into A2A infrastructure acquisitions, realising they couldn’t fight the trend and needed to embrace it to find profitability.

Salomy’s advice for founders is to treat regulators like customers #

Salomy’s most important message for founders is often overlooked.  He points out that regulators are constantly surrounded by people trying to influence them and respond poorly to being misled.  His advice is to be prepared, bring benchmarks from other markets, and remember that a single piece of legislation can either create a significant opportunity for a company or ruin it.

Salomy emphasises the importance of listening to regulators #

For founders and compliance leads who see regulatory engagement as a secondary concern, this conversation offers a unique perspective.  It comes from someone who has been both a fintech company, a network, and a regulator. This provides a concrete example of why Israel, often overlooked for geopolitical reasons, is quietly emerging as a significant market for global payment players.