Karima Lachgar becomes CEO of Olky Wallet

Registered in Luxembourg and with services available in 33 countries, Olky specializes in digital payment solutions, and its Web 3 strategy is currently ratcheting up. By creating a French subsidiary, the fintech has signaled its intent to become a 360° provider of Web 3 services to B2B2C customers.

For Olky president Franck Rouayroux, “the arrival of Karima at Olky is a natural next step in the development of our Web 3 Strategy.” Lachgar has assisted Olky for several years with the application of the neobank’s strategic crypto and open-banking roadmap, and worked on the launch of its Kycoin and Kypay solutions.

A member of the Paris Bar since 2018, Lachgar’s expertise contributes to a range of banking and finance, payment and crypto-asset services. She started out in the lobbying sector with Euralia, before joining CMS Francis Lefebvre Avocats, where she remained for half a decade prior to joining the Paris office of Osborne Clarke in 2021 as the partner in charge of its regulatory financial services, fintechs, cryptoassets & blockchain practices.

The newly minted CEO of Olky Wallet has a master’s in European law from the Pantheon-Sorbonne University, in addition to legal qualifications from Paris’ Nanterre University and London’s South Bank University. In 2019 she enrolled in Paris Mines Tech’s entrepreneurism and innovation programme and is a former director general of AFTI, an organization of French banking and finance professionals.

Olky Wallet is a digital account that lets customers store euros and cryptos in the same digital wallet and convert one to the other as required. Lachgar’s arrival comes as Olky prepares to apply for approval for its Olky Wallet service from France’s financial markets authority, the AMF.