Fintech startup Sila is adding another position to its executive team, this time it’s a chief technology officer and the company has tapped a tech industry veteran.
Chris Chen is joining Sila as CTO. He is based in Los Angeles and was most recently CTO at cryptocurrency platform Wyre, which provides services to cryptocurrency and NFT markets. That company was recently acquired by payments firm Bolt Financial for $1.5 billion.
In this role, Chen will lead Sila’s engineering and product teams. His financial technology career has spanned cryptocurrency, lending, payments, and automated processing. He also has worked in media and entertainment tech.
“Chris brings a wealth of experience in fintech, crypto, and in scaling startups like Sila to large companies,” said co-founder and CEO Shamir Karkal, in a written statement. “Most importantly he is a team player who is focused on growing and mentoring the team as we scale.”
Sila developed an infrastructure platform used by other fintech companies to verify identities, link payments, deposit and credit accounts and transfer money. The company’s technology bridges the needs of new fintech companies and the legacy infrastructure used by financial institutions.
“I am very excited to join Sila at this point in its journey,” said Chen in a written statement. “Fintech is going to grow exponentially over the next decade and Sila, as a crypto-friendly payment infrastructure provider, is exceptionally well positioned to drive that growth and benefit from it.”
Last fall, the company added Rick Holt as chief revenue officer.
