Ralph Karsten

Finance Director | FinTech | SaaS | Board member AWX NL

Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

About

Experience

  • Airwallex (Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands)
    • Group Financial Controller (Global)
      Mar 2023 - Present · 3 yrs 5 mos

      - Building scalable finance teams (100M to 1B ARR in 3,5 year) - Focus on acquisitions & native geo expansion - Responsible for all accounting & reporting for Airwallex globally - Managing 60 entities of which 24 licensed payment companies across 15 countries - Global team of 60, across 7 locations and 5 time zones - Reporting into Global CFO - Fulfilled interim roles as lead for Treasury and FP&A - ERP Implementation, US GAAP, growth enablement

    • Finance Director EMEA & Americas
      Jun 2022 - Present · 4 yrs 2 mos

      - EMEA & Americas Finance Lead, driving hypergrowth and geo expansion - Board Member Airwallex Netherlands (EMI License | DNB) - Board Member Airwallex Capital Netherlands (MIFID License | AFM)

  • Head of Financial Reporting at Mollie
    Sep 2021 - Jun 2022 · 10 mos

    - Financial & Regulatory Reporting - SAP Implementation - IFRS conversion - UK License application

  • Booking.com (5 yrs 11 mos)
    • Finance Director - FinTech & Payments
      Mar 2020 - Sep 2021 · 1 yr 7 mos

      - Finance lead in FinTech & Payments business unit, responsible for design and implementation of all finance processes to globally scale Booking.com payment models and enable new FinTech Products. - Key member in project for obtaining European & UK Payments Licenses - Responsible for Operations, Data analytics and Financial insights - Develop and implement new FinTech infrastructure ie: 'My Wallet' and Payments platform - Manage & develop a team of 45+ FTE / Part of LT with 300+ FTE

    • Senior Manager - Payments
      Nov 2017 - Mar 2020 · 2 yrs 5 mos

    • Controller - Payments
      Sep 2016 - Oct 2017 · 1 yr 2 mos

  • Manager, Financial Services at EY
    Sep 2010 - Oct 2015 · 5 yrs 2 mos

    Promoted from Staff to Manager in 4 years. Total audit experience of 5 years at EY Amsterdam Financial Services. Participated in a 3 month exchange program to EY Stockholm to support the initial IFRS audit of Spotify. As audit manager also engaged in financial accounting advisory projects focused on the improvement of financial reporting for large banks. As an audit manager responsible for: - Performance of audit teams on multiple engagements - Coordination of the engagements including commercial budget discussions and overruns - Primary communications with senior management from clients on progress and issues Area’s involved in: - Banking and Capital Markets - Asset management and private equity - Group Audit and project Management - IFRS / Dutch GAAP / US GAAP