Agarwal joins Tassat with a long track-record of spearheading digital transformation initiatives at several major financial institutions. Most recently, he was SVP and Director of Digital Wealth Management at Citibank, where he led the development of new digitally driven products and services that generated significant revenue and efficiency increases. Prior to this, he led his own consultancy, Blackhawk Innovators and Incubators, where he helped Barclays evolve and optimize the tech strategy for its digital consumer bank. Throughout his career Agarwal has held similar leadership and innovation roles at Accenture, Bank of America, Wipro Technologies and Wells Fargo.

As Tassat’s Managing Director, Payments, Agarwal will lead efforts to expand the footprint of the company’s digital payments applications across U.S. banks. Tassat’s first real-time payments buildout for New York’s Signature Bank recently concluded its second full year of operation, recording exponential increases in transaction volumes and adoption rate among the bank’s commercial clients, while playing a key role in attracting billions of dollars in new client deposits.

Having demonstrated the business value and technological integration of a tokenized payments framework into a traditional payments network, Tassat will look to replicate this success with other financial institutions currently exploring the potential of blockchain-based payments. Agarwal’s expertise in digital transformation and product development will be instrumental to that strategy.

Ron Totaro, Tassat CEO said: “With the milestones we’ve helped achieve, there’s no question that digital payments solve a long-standing industry problem. There are a significant number of banks that would benefit from having the ability to give clients real-time payments capabilities along with a more compelling user experience. Jay is a proven leader in digital transformation at financial institutions and knows how to lead projects that deliver for the business. We’re excited to have him direct our efforts to help banks bridge the gap between traditional and digital payments.”

Agarwal said: “Tassat has distinguished itself as a digital payments provider that actually delivers on the promise of blockchain technology. The company is in a strong position to help drive innovation in digital payments, as institutions already look towards the potential for tokenization, stablecoin-driven payments and real-time settlement. I’m excited to join such a dynamic team and help define how we can reshape the industry’s longstanding payments infrastructure.”