MWAA recognizes Paysafe’s O.B. Rawls with 2019 Industry Achievement Award

Global payments provider Paysafe Group announced last week that the MidWest Acquirers Association (MWAA) has chosen O.B. Rawls, President of Payment Processing North America, as its 2019 Industry Achievement Award recipient.

Recognizing Rawls’sentire payments career, the award will be presented at 4:30 p.m. CDT July 17 at the MWAA 2019 Conference, held in the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center Hotel, in Schaumburg, Illinois, where Paysafe will also be exhibiting at Booth HM09. The presentation of the Industry Achievement Award will be a highlight of the first day of MWAA 2019, which concludes July 18th.

Rawls will be honored for a payments career spanning over 30 years, including his current position at Paysafe and previous leadership role at iPayment. As CEO at iPayment, Rawls proved instrumental in growing the payment and processing solutions provider until its acquisition by Paysafe in June 2018. This transformed Paysafe into a top-5 non-bank acquirer in the US, and saw Rawls appointed as President of the Group’s payment processing division for both the US and Canada.

Additional milestones in Rawls’s vast career in payments and financial services include expanding POS hardware company Hypercom into emerging markets in South America, Asia, and Russia, developing pioneering joint ventures at First Data, and growing the acquiring division at Bank of America.

Rawls said: "Winning the MWAA Industry Achievement Award is a great honor – not only for me but also for the payment professionals I’ve worked with over the course of my career. This award acknowledges their outstanding contribution to the industry."

He added: "It’s currently a very exciting time for the payments business – and I look forward to continuing to collaborate with my colleagues at Paysafe to shape our industry’s future."

Dinah Suppes, President & Board Member at MWAA, said: "MWAA is proud to award the 2019 Industry Achievement Award to O.B. Rawls. O.B.’s extensive contributions to the industry have established him as an iconic figure in the payments space. He has had the kind of career and reputation we all aspire, combining knowledge and a commitment to relationships."

The presentation of the 2019 Industry Achievement Award at MWAA 2019 marks the second time Rawls has received US payments industry recognition in almost as many months. On April 30th, the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) honored him with the 2019 ‘Distinguished Payments Professional’ Star Award at the ETA TRANSACT conference in Las Vegas.