Borderless AI Appoints Former Visa and PayPal Executive Leonard Shen to Board of Advisors to Support Growth

Shen brings decades of experience in compliance and ethics to Borderless AI, strengthening our market position and enhancing our global compliance expertise in the Employer of Record space

Today, we announced the appointment of Leonard Shen to our Board of Advisors to double down on compliance, risk management, and cross-border money movement. 

This appointment comes on the heels of the company’s $27 million seed funding to leverage the power of generative and conversational AI to automate and accelerate the processes of onboarding, managing, and paying international team members. The company’s novel AI agent, Alberni, can perform complex HR tasks such as automating the process of generating global employment agreements and onboarding new employees — all within minutes.

Every day HR professionals who hire globally tell us that their primary concern is compliance.  From labor law and payroll to tax and data protection, businesses building global teams want to partner with an Employer of Record who puts compliance first.

This is proven in the data as well. In HR Dive’s annual Identity of HR survey, HR professionals have increasingly outsourced HR functions with heavy compliance requirements.  From 2021 to 2022, HR Dive noted:

• 54% to 56% increase in benefits outsourcing 
• 53% to 61% increase in payroll outsourcing

There can be several reasons for the interest in outsourcing certain compliance-heavy HR functions - including shrinking HR departments, limited compliance resources, or a drive to refocus HR teams on more strategic work. Regardless, the importance of having an employment partner who prioritizes compliance for its customers is paramount. 

Recent regulatory focus has also catapulted cross-border payment compliance into mainstream prominence.   The importance of proper implementation of KYC processes by payment platforms was recently highlighted in an investigation brought forth by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Sean and I know strong compliance programs are table stakes in the payments space, which is why we are excited to add Leonard to our team. Leonard has led a distinguished career as a compliance executive with a proven track record of building and scaling compliance programs in the payments category.  As more companies scale globally, Leonard will help us sustain our rapid trajectory in cross-border payments as we invest in additional anti-fraud and compliance measures.  

A little more about Leonard: 
During his time as an executive at Visa,  Leonard led the global compliance team through explosive growth,  in addition to serving as a member of the Audit and Risk Committee of the Visa Board of Directors and Visa’s Global Operational Risk Subcommittee. In his role as Chief Compliance Officer at PayPal, he led the overhaul of the compliance program, building a network of more than 800 members as a cross-functional “first line of defense” compliance team.

Leonard joins Borderless AI with 40 years of legal and compliance experience. Upon graduation with honors from Harvard and Harvard Law School, he began his career as a trial attorney and criminal prosecutor in the U.S. Department of Justice, and he then served in private practice at the Washington, D.C. law firm Perkins Coie, in addition to his roles as Deputy Director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund Enforcement Division and Chief Counsel of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Hazardous and Solid Waste Remediation. Over the last two decades, he was the Global Chief Compliance and Ethics Officer for Visa, Inc., American Express, Paypal, and General Electric's Commercial Finance business.

And if that wasn’t enough, in addition to this role on Borderless AI’s Board of Advisors, Leonard continues to serve as Chairman of the Board for US Forex and Canada Forex, leading international payments providers serving over one million customers globally with $100+ billion transfers in 55+ currencies.

We’re excited to keep building the most compliant payments platform at Borderless AI.

Thanks,
Will

CEO & Co-Founder

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