James Hewitt Named CEO, Travelex North America, and Nick Cerise Becomes Global Head of Products and Payments

Financial/Payment Industry Veterans Charged with Expanding and Enhancing Company’s Services

Travelex, a leading foreign exchange and international money transfer company, has appointed two accomplished payment industry executives to senior leadership positions.

James Hewitt has been named CEO of Travelex North America and Nick Cerise has been appointed to the new position of Global Head of Products and Payments. Both executives are responsible for expanding the company’s core currency services and leading the introduction of new services in the burgeoning payments market.

The announcement was made at Money 20/20, a major payments and financial services trade show in Las Vegas. Travelex is exhibiting in booth #1741.

Hewitt, based in New York, is an accomplished leader in financial services and payment innovation and has extensive experience in developing and managing pioneering payment platforms for traditional and emerging commerce. In his new role, he will be driving Travelex North America’s growth strategy and operations, as well as overseeing the company’s digital payments, retail, ATM, international money transfer, B2B outsourcing and wholesale businesses.

Cerise, based in Denver, is a seasoned fintech and marketing strategist and digital product innovator. At Travelex, he will oversee the refinement and development of new global service offerings designed to serve the needs of consumers, banks, corporations and other financial institutions

“We are extremely pleased to add these two outstanding executives, James Hewitt and Nick Cerise, to the Travelex senior management team,” said Anthony Wagerman, CEO, Travelex. “Both James and Nick bring tremendous digital payments experience and successful track records of growing new vertical business to their respective positions. We see these collective strengths enhancing our strategies for reinventingthe physical and digital cross-border money exchange for banks and international businesses across the globe.”

“Travelex is a tremendous international brand that has long been associated with innovation, security and customer satisfaction,” said James Hewitt. “We will develop next generation payment technologies enabling our bank clients to compete more effectively and without the need to build or enhance their own global infrastructure.”

Nick Cerise said: “We see a tremendous opportunity to leverage the brand equity that Travelex has today in both the retail and business-to-business markets. For our retail clients, we will be focusing on enhancing our mobile platform and creating greater accessibility and ease of use for our customers.  We’ll also rededicate ourselves to helping our B2B clients build on the trust and the experience their consumers demand by opening up our platform as a service enabling a branded and white-labeled offering with value-added services that provide a great user experience at a competitive cost point.”

Prior to joining Travelex, Hewitt was Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development in Latin America and the Caribbean at Verifone, one of the world’s largest POS terminal vendors. Previously, he was with Citi for ten years and most recently as Managing Director in Citi Enterprise Payments. Hewitt oversaw the building of payment platforms targeted to emerging and evolving business sectors and led Citi’s global merchant acquiring business, processing in 52 countries, focused on digital e-commerce. He was the lead relationship banker for Google Payments globally and led the launch of Google Wallet in the U.S.

Hewitt has an MBA in international business from University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business in Columbia, S.C. He earned his BA in telecommunications from The George Washington University.

Before joining Travelex, Cerise held a variety of posts during a 13-year tenure at Western Union. As CMO and Global Head of e-commerce at Western Union Business Solutions, he was responsible for growing the organization’s diverse portfolio of global FX and payments and marketing it to business clients around the world. Through his leadership and vision, the company grew its e-commerce business through innovative financial services products and expanded its vertical channel offerings. He also led the global marketing team focused on enabling clients to grow their international business through FX and risk management services.

Other Western Union positions included Vice President and Head of Global Consumer Payments and Social Media; Chief of Staff-CMO at Western Union Ventures; Head of B2B and Digital Marketing, Americas; GM, Equity Accelerator; and Director of Marketing, CRM.

Cerise holds an MBA from Loyola University of Chicago. He earned his bachelor of science in finance, management and computer information services from Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa.