Ozan Özerk | Founder of OpenPayd

Before building OpenPayd, Özerk trained as a physician at the University of Oslo and served as a Ranger in the Norwegian Armed Forces, followed by service in the Norwegian Home Guard. He worked as an emergency room doctor in Norway until 2015, when he transitioned full-time into fintech.

His entrepreneurial career began earlier still. In 2005 he co-founded Biip.no, Norway’s largest social network, which reached the majority of the country’s young population before being acquired by Egmont and Nettavisen in 2008 for over 100 million NOK.

He founded OpenPayd in 2018, consolidating his early fintech ventures into a single platform now headquartered in London with offices in Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Malta, South Africa and the USA.

Özerk has been a Forbes Finance Council member since 2021, contributing analysis on stablecoins, embedded finance, and cross-border payments. He engages regularly with regulators including the FCA, ECB, and SEC on the future of digital assets and payment infrastructure.

In 2025, Özerk was named “Enterprise Entrepreneur” at the Enterprise Awards Dinner, held at Drapers’ Hall in London — an annual ceremony honouring founders of fast-growing technology companies across stages and sectors, and one of the most recognised events of its kind in the UK tech industry.