Founder of Payments Network Zelle Joins Stellar-Focused Startup as CEO

Stellar-focused (XLM) crypto development company Interstellar appointed the founder of digital payments network Zelle Mike Kennedy as its new CEO.

On Sept. 12, the company announced the appointment in a Medium blog post.

Stellar as an international payments system

Kennedy’s network Zelle is the payment system used by JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Bank of America and many other financial institutions, according to its website. It is also claimed that Zelle manages over $50 billion in transaction volumes from over 25 million users.

Now, Interstellar expects Kennedy and his team to build new services for Stellar. Kennedy illustrated his ideas:

“With Interstellar I see another opportunity to solve a real-world problem. Today, international payments are inefficient, expensive, and slow. Millions of individuals and businesses would benefit from solving these problems. The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has developed what I believe is the best blockchain based payments network, enabling fast and inexpensive international payments.”

Work lies ahead

That being said, Kennedy also admitted that Stellar’s ecosystem still lacks some features needed to fulfill his vision. He also noted that, in his opinion, a nonprofit organization such as SDF is unsuitable to solve this. This is Interstellar’s role, Kennedy added:

“This is where Interstellar comes in. We will deliver these missing pieces of the puzzle to allow the Stellar network to achieve its potential. We will solve the remaining problems, turbocharging adoption and growth — making international payments better for millions and millions of companies and end users.”

Not the only announcement

Alongside Kennedy’s appointment, Interstellar also announced that it is “spinning-out a new app-focused company” called Pogo, which has been in stealth development for some time. The company in question reportedly aims to achieve wallet interoperability and the post explains that the app takes advantage of Stellar’s distinguishing features:

“As you’ll see when the service goes live, Pogo is the kind of application that Stellar is uniquely positioned to enable, thanks to the network’s ability to create low-friction, high-liquidity, real-time corridors for FX settlement between financial entities.”

As Cointelegraph reported earlier this month, American asset management firm Franklin Templeton Investments has filed a preliminary prospectus with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission for a government money market fund with a focus on blockchain-based shares.