Former Western Union and PayPal Executive Rolf Haag joins bitcoin startup BitPay

Bitcoin payments processor BitPay has announced that Rolf Haag is joining the company as the Head of Business Solutions.

Haag, with close to 20 years of experience in financial technology, will be a valuable addition to BitPay. He has built and grown global payments products at Western Union and PayPal.

At Western Union, Haag served as the Director of Global Mass Payments and built a global mass payments business and underlying product, including defining the global B2B and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) mass payments vision, product and go to market strategies. At PayPal, he held several product management positions and most recently owned PayPal Mass Payment global disbursements engine.

As the Head of Business Solutions at BitPay, Haag will be responsible for managing the company’s Business-to-Business (B2B) and Mass Payments businesses.

“BitPay’s B2B payments solution is our fastest growing product and just had its highest sales month ever in October,” said Stephen Pair, CEO and co-founder of BitPay. “Rolf’s background is an asset to BitPay and will help us accelerate the success of our B2B and Mass Payments businesses globally.”

Haag said that he sees “striking similarities” in early PayPal adoption and BitPay adoption particularly among businesses paying their global suppliers.

“Bitcoin is ground breaking for global B2B and Mass Payments, because its cheaper, quicker and more transparent than bank wires or PayPal. BitPay compliantly delivers these benefits while eliminating Bitcoin price risk. I’m beyond excited to bring these benefits to businesses around world,” he said.

BitPay’s mass payments product allows global marketplaces to pay out their customers in Bitcoin for only a 1% fee to any non-sanctioned country in the world. In April, the company raised $40 million in series B round led by Aquiline Technology Growth (ATG), which brought the total funding to date to over $70 million.