About Us
Our Vision
To enable an all-inclusive approach to moving money.
Xago Technologies was founded in 2016 by Jurgen Kuhnel, Sonya Kuhnel and Mark Chirnside to harness the power of mobile, retail networks and blockchain technology to play a crucial role in transforming the payment industry, particularly in Africa.
We provide innovative money movement that changes the way money flows, what it costs and how long it takes to reach a destination by bypassing traditional payment rails, providing secure, traceable and effective solutions to all elements of the financial ecosystem.
The Xago team continues to develop bespoke, highly secure, fast and fully compliant products and services including a payment gateway, trade exchange, fiat on- and off-ramps based on trading ZAR/XRP cryptocurrency on the XRP Ledger, minimising currency exchange fluctuation risk.
Executive Team
Xago’s executive team consists of serial entrepreneurs and technologists who all have extensive experience in disruptive technologies, particularly in the financial and security space. Our vision is to enable an all-inclusive approach to moving money.
Mark Chirnside
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder
Mark is a highly successful, experienced global fintech executive and board-level expert. He has spent over 20 years founding, building, leading, raising investment funds and transforming multi-million-pound solutions for brands such as Orange, Ukash, Naspers PayU, ThisIsMe, Entersekt and now Xago.
Jurgen Kuhnel
Chief Commercial Officer and Co-Founder
Jurgen is one of South Africa’s leading blockchain and XRP evangelists and has been involved with crypto since early 2012. He initially founded a QR mobile payment start-up utilising credit cards but realised the power of blockchain to facilitate financial transactions. The start-up pivoted and is now Xago Technologies.
Sonya Kuhnel
Co-Founder
Sonya is an early adopter of cryptocurrencies and one of the earliest educators of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology in Africa. Other than consulting to Xago, she is the Co-Founder of Bitcoin Events, the first event company to host blockchain and cryptocurrency events in Africa and Co-Founder and Managing Director of the Blockchain Academy which has taught over 2,000 students in 7 countries in Africa.
Cheridan Inglis
Chief Marketing Officer
Cheridan is a strategic marketing executive with over 20 years’ experience working with global companies to create, develop and execute marketing strategies within the technology environment. She has partnered with organisations such as VeriSign, Thawte Technologies, Digi-Outsource, Blueware, ThisIsMe, HyperionDev and now Xago.
Kevin Lewis
Chief Revenue Officer
Kevin is a highly experienced financial executive with a strong ability to connect businesses to relevant solutions within the technology industry. Kevin successfully assists our clients with innovative and cost-effective solutions for enhancing competitiveness, mitigating risk, increasing revenues, complying with regulations, and improving customer service offerings.
Simon Bishop
Acting Chief Technical Officer
Simon has 20 years’ of experience in software development, with over 5 years utilising blockchain technology. He specialises in systems integration and architecture in the corporate and start-up space and manages Xago’s development team via the agile methodology.