Elias Ghanem – Telr – UAE
Written by
Elias Ghanem
Founder & CEO, Telr
Elias Ghanem is the CEO & Founder of Telr, a multi-currency payment gateway. Prior to that, he was Managing Director of PayPal Middle East and North Africa, GM of PayPal South East Asia and India, after a long time spent as senior Visa executive. His leadership roles at PayPal, Visa and Accor Group across the world have generated breakthrough results. Elias is fluent in 5 languages and is a Business Science Graduate of the “Institut de Preparation à l’Administration et la Gestion”, a Business School in Paris, with a major in Finance, and received an MBA from the University of Miami.
Elias had a big leadership role at PayPal, one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world, but that did not fulfill his ambitions. He had to create something of his own. Elias was aware that most payment gateways did not support local currencies, which caused merchants and consumers to transact in USD at extra costs among other issues that did not aid regional e-commerce. His solution was Telr, which he launched in October 2013.
Telr empowers merchants to offer payment solutions in multiple languages and local currencies, offers logistics solutions, is integrated easily and provides loan options. Moreover, three months ago, Telr strategically merged with Innovate Payments, the best payment gateway in the UAE, aiming to boost Telr’s market growth. Together, this dream team can expand their products and services and accelerate expanding into new markets.
Elias’s extensive experience in e-commerce and his desire to do something for entrepreneurs in his native region, lead him to become an entrepreneur himself. He left behind his stable Senior Executive lifestyle at large corporations. He took the risk and launched a simplified and innovative payment gateway as a solution for the rapidly expanding e-commerce businesses in emerging markets.