OFX hires former clearXchange boss Mike Kennedy to lead North American business

Mike Kennedy is OFX's new president for North America, providing more local digital payment experience for the Australian-based international transfer company.

At OFX, Kennedy will be responsible for overseeing North American operations. OFX is working with U.S. e-commerce businesses that sell outside the U.S., and has bolstered its gateway to handle increasingly larger cross-border transfers.

In addition to the U.S., Canada and Australia, OFX serves customers in the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Hong Kong and handled about $20 billion in global money transfers in the past year. The OFX Group is in the midst of a brand adjustment, consolidating services under the global brand OFX from a group of sub-brands OzForex, UKForex, USForex, CanadianForex, NZForex, Tranzfers and ClearFX. OFX 's customers include the international money transfer providers Travelex, MoneyGram, ING Direct, and Macquarie International.

"The market is ripe for modernization with new methods for sending and receiving payments internationally," said Kennedy in an Oct. 12 release.

Kennedy is a co-founder of clearXchange, the bank-driven P-to-P transfer network that has since rebranded as Zelle, serving as CEO and a board member from 2011 to 2016. While at clearXchange, Kennedy pushed to expand the service's bank network, sought to promote the network beyond its original use case of P-to-P payments and helped lead the company's sale to Early Warning, another bank-operated risk management venture. Kennedy has also served as executive vice president and head of innovation and payments strategy for Wells Fargo (one of clearXchange's founders) and has more recently worked as a consultant.