Patrice Bouexel, President & GM EMEA, Sis ID

Today we're delighted to speak with Patrice Bouexel, President & GM EMEA at Sis ID, the European entity of the Eftsure Group. With payment fraud becoming increasingly sophisticated and cross-border, Patrice shares how Sis ID has built one of the world's largest controlled payment data communities, validating over 100 million transactions, and why trusted data is becoming as critical as financial infrastructure itself.

My questions are in bold - over to you Patrice:

Who are you and what's your background?

I'm Patrice Bouexel, President of Sis ID and General Manager EMEA. My background sits at the intersection of enterprise technology, data and security: before Sis ID, I held commercial and strategic roles at IBM, Dell Technologies and Teradata, working with large corporations on data and information management.

I studied an Executive Master in Management graduate from ESCP Europe and also taught a few years later in ESCP's Master of Science in Big Data and Business Analysis programme. I was immersed in the entrepreneurial world from an early age.

In 2020, I joined Sis ID, first to lead the company's commercial operations, then as Chief Strategy Officer. Following the merger between Sis ID and Eftsure in 2025, I had the opportunity to be appointed General Manager Europe, overseeing the group's European activities under the leadership of Eftsure CEO Jon Soldan.

What is your job title and what are your general responsibilities?

I am the General Manager and President of Sis ID, the European entity of the Eftsure Group.

In the early stages of the acquisition, one of my key responsibilities was to ensure a successful integration of Sis ID into the Eftsure group. Since joining Eftsure in July 2025, Sis ID has retained its strong brand identity while benefiting from the scale and expertise of a global organisation. My role is to lead our European operations, ensuring we achieve our growth ambitions across all markets while aligning our strategy with the long-term vision of the Eftsure Group.

On a daily basis, this involves overseeing commercial performance, supporting our teams, strengthening customer relationships, driving market expansion, and ensuring that we continue to innovate in the field of payment security and trusted business data.

Can you give us an overview of your business?

Our motto is simple: Trusted Data. Secured Payments.

To fight a global plague, we needed a global solution - one capable of securing payments in every country.

Sis ID transforms a complex ecosystem of payment information into a single, reliable source of trusted data, enabling organisations to secure and control their payment processes at scale.

By consolidating multiple trusted data sources into a single platform, we enable businesses to make safer payment decisions while continuously enriching a growing community of certified and verified payment data.

We strongly believe that combating payment fraud requires a collective effort. Fraudsters continue to become more organised and sophisticated, which is why collaboration is essential. Through this approach, Sis ID has built one of the world's largest controlled payment data communities. To date, our platform has validated and monitored more than 100 million transactions on behalf of our customers.

Tell us how you are funded?

Sis ID is the European subsidiary of Eftsure, a US-based company backed by Level Equity, our majority shareholder, an investment fund managing more than 6.4 billion dollars in assets.

Prior to becoming part of the Eftsure Group, Sis ID raised - in 2021 - €5 million Series A backed by Bpifrance's Digital Venture fund, BNP Paribas' venture arm Opera Tech Ventures, and Aonia Ventures - having a major European bank at the capital table was strategically important in our business. The Serie A aimed at accelerating our growth and international expansion. Today, we benefit from the support, scale, and resources of a global organisation, allowing us to continue investing in innovation and market development across Europe.

What's the origin story? Why did you start the company? To solve what problems?

Sis ID was founded ten years ago by a collective of CFOs from major CAC 40 companies who were increasingly concerned about the rise of payment fraud.

Rather than creating another standalone technology solution, they designed a collaborative platform built around the idea that trusted payment data should be shared across a community.

From the beginning, the objective was to help finance teams prevent fraud, reduce payment errors, and establish greater trust throughout the payment ecosystem.

Today, more than 140,000 users contribute to and benefit from this shared network. Every verified data point strengthens our collective database, which in turn benefits every organisation connected to it, creating a continuously expanding virtuous circle.

As fraud becomes more sophisticated and regulatory requirements continue to increase, finance teams are under growing pressure. Our mission is to secure payments by ensuring the reliability of payment data before transactions take place.

Simply put: better data leads to safer payments.

Who are your target customers? What's your revenue model?

We primarily serve large international organisations operating across multiple European markets.

Our customer base - typically from CFO Office teams that pay thousands of suppliers and cannot afford a single fraudulent transfer - includes many leading companies in France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Switzerland, US and more with our footprint that continues to expand throughout Europe.

Our business model is aligned with standard SaaS and FinTech practices. Customers subscribe to an annual licence, typically within a multi-year agreement, with pricing tailored to their specific transaction volumes, operational requirements, and risk management objectives.

If you had a magic wand, what one thing would you change in the banking and/or FinTech sector?

I would make verified payee data universally available by accelerating the adoption of common, open and interoperable standards for trusted business and banking data across countries, institutions and ecosystems.

Fraudsters face very few borders, while businesses often need to navigate fragmented data sources, regulatory frameworks, and verification systems.

Greater interoperability and collaboration across the financial industry would drastically improve fraud prevention, reduce operational complexity, and create a safer environment for all participants.

What is your message for the larger players in the Financial Services marketplace?

The future of payment security cannot be built in isolation. It is a collective problem, and no institution - however large - can solve it alone.

Financial institutions, corporates, regulators, and technology providers all have a role to play in creating a trusted payment ecosystem. The organisations that will lead tomorrow are those that embrace collaboration and recognise that trusted data is becoming just as important as financial infrastructure itself.

Payment security is no longer simply an IT or compliance issue - it is a strategic business imperative.

Where do you get your Financial Services/FinTech industry news from?

I regularly follow several industry publications, including:

Finextra - for insights into banking innovation, payments, and regulatory developments.

The Financial Times - for broader financial services and economic trends.

The Paypers - for payments-focused news and FinTech industry analysis.

The European Payments Council on Verification of Payee, and the French financial press such as Les Echos.

These sources provide an excellent balance between strategic market trends and day-to-day industry developments.

Can you list 3 people you rate from the FinTech and/or Financial Services sector that we should be following on LinkedIn, and why?

Nik Milanović - Founder of This Week in FinTech. He provides one of the most comprehensive analyses of FinTech innovation, investment trends, and emerging market opportunities.

Brett King - A globally recognised FinTech thought leader, author, and futurist whose insights on digital banking, AI, and financial innovation consistently challenge the status quo.

Simon Taylor - Co-founder of Sardine and one of the most respected voices in payments, fraud prevention, and financial technology. His commentary offers both strategic vision and practical expertise.

What FinTech services (and/or apps) do you personally use?

Sis ID use several FinTech solutions on a daily basis that simplify business and personal financial management:

Spendesk for expense management and corporate spending controls.

Pennylane for financial management and accounting collaboration.

These platforms demonstrate how technology can make financial processes more efficient, transparent, and user-friendly.

And personally, like many French entrepreneurs I use modern banking and payment tools daily. But honestly, my most-used 'fintech habit' is professional deformation: whenever I use a payment app, I'm testing how it verifies who I'm really paying.

What's the best new FinTech product or service you've seen recently?

One of the most interesting FinTech companies I've seen recently is Ramp.

What stands out is that Ramp is not simply helping finance teams spend money more efficiently; it is helping them spend less money altogether.

I find this particularly interesting because it redefines the role of FinTech. Rather than digitising existing processes, it actively helps companies make better financial decisions. That's a very different value proposition from traditional financial software.

I was also impressed by their corporate card, designed for AI agents to spend on behalf of businesses. It opens a question that sits at the heart of our own mission: when software starts paying suppliers autonomously, verifying the identity of the beneficiary - the company, the account, and now even the machine initiating the payment - becomes non-negotiable.

Finally, let's talk predictions. What trends do you think are going to define the next few years in the FinTech sector?

We are seeing a growing number of regulatory initiatives and frameworks (VoP, eIDAS 2.0, LEIs) which are making verified identity the backbone of payments - soon, paying an unverified beneficiary will feel as reckless as browsing an unencrypted site.

While these developments are extremely positive, they also highlight what I believe will be the defining challenge of the coming years: data quality.

Every one of these frameworks rests on the same foundation - the data being checked. A verification is only as trustworthy as the registers, bank records and identity sources behind it, and that data is fragmented, inconsistent across countries, and unavailable in many regions beyond Europe.

Commercial teams have long understood the value of high-quality customer data. The same transformation is now arriving in finance departments. As payment security, automation, compliance, and AI become increasingly dependent on data reliability, organisations will need to invest heavily in data governance and verification.

The future of payment security will not simply be about protecting transactions - it will be about building trusted digital identities around verified business and banking information.

In a world increasingly driven by automation and artificial intelligence, trusted data will become one of the most valuable assets any organisation can possess.

Many thanks to Patrice Bouexel for taking the time to speak with us. You can find out more about Sis ID on their website.