Sidney Gottesman

CEO, FinSec Innovation Lab, Israel

Sidney Gottesman is the CEO of the FinSec Innovation Lab. In this role, he is responsible for the Lab’s operation to its shareholders (Mastercard and Enel X) and the Lab’s broader set of stakeholders. The Lab provides incubation / innovation lab services to early-stage startup in Cyber and FinTech and operates under a license from the IIA Innovation Authority, the Israel National Cyber Directorate, and the Israel Ministry of Finance. At Mastercard, Sidney has held several roles. Sidney was senior vice president in Corporate Security and the program owner for employee identity and access management. In this role, he is responsible for the following enterprise services: identity life cycle management, behavior analytics, privileged access management, internal authentication/authorization, physical access, and controls. His team included product management, engineering, business operations, and governance. Previously, Sidney was chief technology officer (CTO) for Quality Assurance. in this role, he was responsible for functions that support the technology delivery of Mastercard’s products and services. This includes Development Services, Testing Services, Service Level Agreement (SLA) Management, and Customer Implementation Services (CIS). Prior to this, Sidney served as the Business Information Officer for Emerging Payments. In this role, he was responsible for the technology delivery of Mastercard’s Emerging Payments products. This included Mastercard Digital Enablement Service (MDES), an on-behalf service that generates device account numbers for use in smart devices, such as mobile phones, for proximity or remote payments; MasterPass, a digital wallet service that makes online shopping safe, easy, and convenient; OpenAPI, which provides integration services to any company seeking to add payment or payment-related capabilities to their own applications; MoneySend, which provides fast, secure, and convenient ways for consumers to receive funds into their Mastercard credit, debit, and prepaid accounts; and support for the Mastercard Mobile Transactions Solutions unit. Prior to joining Mastercard, Sidney was chief operating officer at Bank Leumi USA, with responsibility for operations and technology support for the private, commercial and branch banking divisions. In this role, he worked directly with executives to understand the business’ long-term objectives and chart and execute an operations and technology strategy. Before joining Bank Leumi USA, he worked for Citigroup in various technology management roles, and prior to that, with IBM. Sidney holds a juris doctorate from Brooklyn Law School in Brooklyn, NY, a Master of Arts in Computer Science and a Bachelor of Arts in Math and Computer Science from Queens College of the City University of New York in Queens, NY.

popup