CEO & Founder, Viva Wallet
Haris Karonis was born in 1974 in Athens, Greece and is the Founder and CEO of Viva Wallet. In 2000, he founded Viva Wallet (ex-Realize SA) which provided software solutions for transaction-based systems in banks, airlines and telecom providers in Southeastern Europe. In 2006, Haris founded Viva Services, which provided B2C VOIP services and later expanded successfully to the e-ticketing market for sports, entertainment, and travel services, through the Viva.gr platform. After the activation of PSD in Europe, Viva Payments was founded in 2011, with the mission to change the European payments landscape through innovative technology. Viva Payments has grown its presence across Europe, by utilizing an e-money license and setting up local branches in 23 European countries. The company has self-built a very flexible, entirely cloud-based payments platform and by controlling the entire payments value chain without any intermediaries, it is offering merchants of all sizes across Europe, a broad array of payments and transaction services which include local IBAN accounts, card acceptance services, card issuing and credit. In 2020 Viva Wallet obtained a banking license under the entity of Vivabank, further expanding the services bundle offered to SMBs in Europe. Haris Karonis is investing actively in innovative technology companies across the world.