Jakub Kiwior became the company's general manager for Central and Eastern Europe a couple of weeks ago
The fact that Małgorzata O’Shaughnessy, Visa’s previous general manager for CEE, was leaving the company had been known at least since January this year, when it was announced in a press release. Since then, Visa was looking for her replacement. Several potential candidates for taking over Visa's CEE operations in the coming years were talked about, but nobody knew who would actually be nominated for the position. Until now.
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Visa’s Polish press office published a release that makes it clear that the recruitment is over. – Małgorzata O’Shaughnessy will be stepping down as Visa's general manager for Central and Eastern Europe. She will be replaced by Jakub Kiwior starting July 1st. In order to assure continuity in our customer and partner relations, Małgorzata O’Shaughnessy will continue to advise Visa in strategic matters – says the answer to an email inquiry I sent to the company.
Jakub Kiwior has been working for Visa since 2007. At first, he was a sales director, later becoming a country manager. Afterwards, he was promoted to the company's international structures and became the head of regional marketing and business development for Central and Eastern Europe. Since 2018, he was Visa's general manager for Poland and Hungary. Before coming to Visa, he worked at eService, Pekao and Novitus. He's one of the most recognizable people on the Polish payment market.
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Małgorzata O’Shaughnessy is a true legend of the payment world - and not only in Poland. She joined Visa almost 30 years ago - before banks in Poland were even issuing payment cards. The company's January statement said that Małgorzata O’Shaughnessy was responsible for a number of spectacular achievements for Visa, and the Central and Eastern Europe region she was responsible for has long been one of Visa's most innovative and fastest growing markets in the world, especially when it comes to contactless payments.
