Philip Fayer

Early life

Philip Fayer was born in Montreal and spent his childhood in Belgium and Israel. Not a lot is known about his early life and family. His full birth name was Philipe Fayer and he was born in 1979.


He received his education at Valley Forge Military Academy and College located in Pennsylvania. He later attended Concordia University for a time, as well. Here, he would become a part of the “wealthy dropout class”, joining the likes of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. In 2003, while still a student at Concordia, he and co-founder Lester Hernandez started a payment processing company. It would become very successful immediately, and he would then leave Concordia before graduating.


Besides his passion for flying planes and racing cars, Fayer is also an avid biker and runner. He also devotes his time to several charitable causes, such as organizations that support job placement for young people and those that fund cancer research.


He is also a pilot and a race car driver. Given his background and entrepreneurial spirit, it’s not surprising that Philip Fayer chose a challenging career in the electronic payments industry. This field is typically dominated by large banks and established companies, but Fayer saw an opportunity to provide equipment and services to merchants to help them process electronic payments. Despite the competitive nature of the industry, he took the leap and has since made a name for himself in the field.

Career

Philip Fayer, the founder of Nuvei Corp., currently serves as the chairman and CEO of the company. Established in 2003, the Montreal-based payment processor has a client base that spans from e-commerce platforms to online casinos, and it is capable of processing payments in more than 150 currencies.



He entered the field with Nuvei in perfect timing. The company saw immediate success, in part, because of the fact that private payment processors were still relatively new and competition was low.



Fayer’s fintech innovation attracted the attention of investors like Goldman Sachs, as it provided a solution for both online and offline merchants to process credit and debit payments independently of banks and credit card issuers. These investors saw the potential for Fayer’s innovation to greatly impact the payment ecosystem and chose to invest in it.


Under Fayer’s leadership, Nuvei has grown to have over 50,000 customers and became a publicly traded company on the Toronto Stock Exchange in September 2020. The initial public offering (IPO) of the company raised a remarkable $700 million, making it the highest amount raised by a tech company in the history of the Toronto Stock Exchange.


He has a proven track record in entrepreneurship, having previously established and run the successful company, Paysystems Corp. At the young age of twenty, he secured partnerships with major international banks and built a business that serviced over 23,000 Internet merchants and generated millions of dollars. Paysystems Corp. functioned as a billing aggregator, collecting and dispersing merchant funds. However, changes in regulations rendered the business model unsustainable, forcing Fayer to pivot his strategy and start anew.



Philip Fayer established Pivotal Payments in 2003 with the aim of making payment processing more accessible to small and mid-sized businesses. Over the years, the company has expanded its services and now provides merchant services to large corporations, chains, and franchises. Today, Pivotal Payments serves over 90,000 merchants in North America and boasts 550 employees. The company processes an impressive US$15 billion in annual transaction volume.


Fayer’s leadership skills have been widely recognized and he has received numerous awards and accolades. In 2009, he was named one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40, and in 2003, he received the Ernst & Young award for Emerging Business. Under his direction, Pivotal Payments was also a finalist for the top 50 best managed companies in Canada as recognized by Deloitte and Touche. These achievements speak to the success of both Philip Fayer and the company he founded.



Nuvei, a leading payments technology company based in Montreal, offers businesses a range of pay-in and payout solutions, including card issuing, risk and fraud management, and banking services. The company allows businesses to accept over 570 alternative payment methods.



In September 2020, Nuvei went public with a historic initial public offering of $700 million on the Toronto Stock Exchange, becoming the largest technology company IPO ever offered on the exchange. A year later, in October 2021, the company closed another successful IPO of $424.8 million on the Nasdaq.



On the topic of crypto and whether or not he sees it as a threat to his industry, Fayer was reported as saying he sees it as an opportunity.

Net Worth

Philip Fayer has an estimated net worth of $2.4 Billion. His exact worth may not be publicly known and can fluctuate due to investments.

Achievement

Of his many achievements, Fayer has been recognized for many accomplishments. Here are some of them:

• Canada’s Top 40 Under 40
• Ernst & Young award for Emerging Business
• top 50 best managed companies in Canada as recognized by Deloitte and Touche (given to his company)