David Sear to chair Semafone

Mr Sear will share his industry experience with the Semafone team as the company continues its rapid UK growth and expands into new international territories.

As a senior executive at WorldPay from 1999 to 2003, David Sear was one of the pioneers of secure online payments and experienced first-hand the challenges of maintaining consumer confidence in new channels for credit card payments. Since 2006 his leadership of two significant divisions of Travelex has brought close involvement with the demands of PCI compliance. "Semafone offers a solution to a problem that I was already acutely aware of," he explained. "Maintaining PCI compliance is a significant cost to any business and telephone payments are still the missing piece of the puzzle for many companies. Semafone has arrived in the market at exactly the right time with a truly scalable, high-end solution at a reasonable cost. I am looking forward to making a contribution to the success of such a highly positive, engaging team."

"David joins us at an exciting time for Semafone," said Tim Critchley, CEO of Semafone. "We have just announced Sky as a customer and the number of call centre seats running Semafone in the UK now exceeds 20,000. We have also recently signed two new international partnerships and are delighted to have been shortlisted for the Merchant Risk Council's 2012 METAwards. David's decision to come on board is another piece of inspiring news for Semafone and will provide us with the additional heavyweight experience we need to take the company to the next level."

Semafone announced its work with Sky earlier this month. The company has also signed partnership agreements with Intuate in South Africa and Acticall in France.

David Sear is also chairman of fast-growing technology company Bango. He was introduced to Semafone by executive and non-executive search firm Intramezzo specialists in high growth, investment backed businesses.