Welcome Thomas Rivera

We're excited to announce that Thomas Rivera has joined Dfns as Strategic Account Manager for EMEA. Thomas brings more than a decade of experience at the intersection of payments, custody, and financial infrastructure, with a track record of building and growing institutional relationships across Europe. His background spans cross-border payments, eCommerce, fraud prevention, and securities custody, which is exactly the operational context our clients work in every day.

From custody operations to digital finance

Thomas began his career at Brown Brothers Harriman, one of the oldest privately held banks in the United States, where he spent over four years working with the European Intermediary Banks segment and private banking clients. As a Senior Client Service Representative, he provided expertise across the full spectrum of custody operations, including trades, securities lending, mutual funds, corporate actions, FX, cash, tax, and billing.

This early grounding in the operational mechanics of traditional finance, particularly in regulated, multi-jurisdictional environments, gives Thomas a clear understanding of the rigor required when institutions move real money. It is a perspective that translates directly to digital asset infrastructure, where the same operational discipline is non-negotiable.

Building global payments infrastructure at Thunes

Thomas spent most of the past six years at Thunes, the global cross-border payments network connecting fintechs, banks, and merchants across more than 130 countries. He joined as Key Account Manager and progressed through Payment Methods Sales Manager, Business Development Director, and most recently Strategic Partnerships Director, working out of Paris and then Barcelona.

Across those roles, he managed relationships with major payment methods globally, signed and launched new institutional clients, and grew revenue across his portfolio by more than 100% in two years. He also led the team responsible for expanding Thunes' global merchant reach, helping international merchants launch new payment solutions across markets.

This combination of institutional sales, partnership strategy, and deep payments fluency maps directly to what many Dfns clients are building today: stablecoin payouts, cross-border settlement, and onchain payment rails.

eCommerce, fraud, and digital banking

Between his two chapters at Thunes, Thomas served as Business Development Director France for eCommerce and Merchant Fraud at ACI Worldwide, a payments software company that processes trillions of dollars in transactions daily for more than 5,000 organizations. There he focused on integrated payment gateway and fraud management solutions for PSPs, acquirers, ISVs, and merchants.

Earlier, at Ailleron, he worked as International Sales Manager helping financial institutions deliver new digital solutions to their customers, from market analysis and product development through to contract negotiation and delivery.

Across these roles, Thomas has built a strong commercial instinct for what financial institutions actually need from their infrastructure providers, and how to translate technical capability into operational value.

What Thomas will build at Dfns

At Dfns, Thomas will lead strategic accounts across EMEA, working with banks, fintechs, payment companies, and capital markets clients building on our platform. His role is to be the bridge between our institutional clients' objectives and the capabilities Dfns delivers. That means helping clients scale their use of Dfns infrastructure across wallet operations, transaction lifecycle management, and compliance workflows, and ensuring that what they build on top of Dfns continues to meet the operational, regulatory, and commercial demands of their markets.

Given the momentum we are seeing across EMEA in tokenized deposits, stablecoin payments, and onchain treasury, Thomas joins at exactly the right moment. His mix of custody background, payments expertise, and institutional relationship-building is rare, and it is exactly what our clients in the region need as they move from pilots to production.

We're excited to have him on board.

We're hiring

Dfns continues to grow across commercial, engineering, product, and operations. If you're interested in building infrastructure for the next generation of financial systems, we'd love to hear from you.

Apply here: jobs.deel.com/job-boards/dfns