TON Foundation hires former crypto-focused Visa exec to oversee its global payments strategy

The TON Foundation, an organization overseeing the development of The Open Network, hired former Visa executive Nikola Plecas as its vice president of payments.

Plecas is stepping into a new role at the TON Foundation to spearhead its global payments strategy. This involves managing partnerships for applications based on TON and Telegram and the foundation’s compliance strategy, according to a release shared with The Block.

“As payments become a more central part of TON’s ecosystem, it made sense to have dedicated leadership focused on this area,” Plecas told The Block in an email. “The goal is to help accelerate the development of payment capabilities across TON, so creating this role was really about aligning resources with that growing priority.”

“In the first few months, the focus is on shaping a clear payments vision for TON’s ecosystem,” Plecas said. “That means identifying where we can have the most impact — both in terms of user experience and infrastructure. One concrete goal is to streamline our on- and off-ramp flows, with the aim of making noticeable improvements in how easily users can move between fiat and crypto within the ecosystem.”

Plecas previously served several crypto-focused executive positions at the major payments firm Visa, including as the crypto business lead in Europe and as a senior director managing new product commercialization for Visa Crypto, according to LinkedIn.

Plecas will now work closely with TON Foundation CEO Max Crown, who joined the organization in April after co-founding, and serving as CFO and COO, of the crypto payments platform MoonPay.

“Payments are central to TON’s mission of delivering decentralized services to mainstream users,” Crown said in a statement. “With deep industry expertise and a clear vision for scaling payment infrastructure, Nikola brings the experience and leadership we need to accelerate TON’s global growth.”

TON is a Layer 1 blockchain that was built to be used within the messaging platform Telegram. The network’s token, Toncoin, maintains a $7.5 billion market capitalization, according to The Block’s TON Price Page.