Bios

RENÉ M. PELEGERO
President and Managing Director

René founded RPGC Group LLC in 2002 after working for four years as the head of Global Payments at Amazon.com, where he was responsible for all aspects of payments processing for more than 30 million customers, managing relationships with banks, processors, credit card companies and for driving the adoption of new forms of payment.

For four thriving years René led RPGC, consulting for companies like Google, PayPal, Symantec, Cybersource, First Data, Visa International, American Greetings, Netgiro in Sweden and Pago in Germany. In 2006 René joined eBay/PayPal, as Senior Director, Strategy and Industry Relations. In this role, René was responsible for managing PayPal's relations with the financial services industry, and defining the strategies that maximize the benefits provided by the financial networks.

Growing restless after five years with eBay/PayPal, René re-launched RPGC in 2011 with the aim of bringing his views and ideas on how to make remote and global payments more efficient and cost-effective to a larger audience.

Already a seasoned payments professional with over fifteen years of experience in financial services prior to joining Amazon.com, René held senior management positions at Electronic Payment Services, Inc., a leading electronic funds transfer (EFT) processor; GE Capital, an international consumer lending group; and Tandem Computers, a hardware manufacturer of fault tolerant systems heavily used by the payments industry worldwide. René also provided strategic planning and systems integration advice to the bankcard and retail banking industry in a consulting capacity.

René has served as board member of the Direct Response Forum (DRF), co-chaired the e-commerce purchasing council of the Electronic Funds Transfer Association (EFTA), served as a member of the National Automated Clearing House Association (NACHA) Payments Institute Board of Regents, and was a member of the advisory board for ISO & Agent Weekly and of advisory panels for The Economist, BAI, and NACHA. He is currently a member of the Association for Finance Professionals (AFP) and represented PayPal to the Canadian Payments Association's Stakeholders Advisory Council (CPA), the International Payments Framework Association (IPFA), and NACHA's Global Payments Forum.

Quoted and published in many industry related publications, René's opinions are highly sought. He has been quoted in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, American Banker, Credit Card Management, USA Today, The Green Sheet, and many more. He has also contributed to specialized payment publications such as Association for Finance Professional's "The Exchange", the Canadian Payments Association "Forum", and Wiley Financial Series book "The Future of Finance after SEPA". During his tenure at eBay/PayPal, René filed for patents with the US Patent and Trademark Office for "Unified Identity Verification" and for "Payments Using Funds Pushing".

René received a B.A. in Business Information and Computing Systems and a M.B.A. from San Francisco State University.