About Ozan Özerk

Dr. Ozan Özerk was born in Nicosia, Cyprus in 1979. At a young age, he moved to Norway with his family. Kamil Özerk, his father, is a professor at the Department of Education in the University of Oslo. Meral R. Özerk, his mother, specializes in children with learning disabilities. She works as a senior advisor at Statped. Both have authored several books in the field of education, autism and bilingualism. 

After high school at Nordstrand Videregående Skole, Dr. Ozan Özerk joined the Norwagian Armed Forces and served as a Ranger from 1999 to 2000. Later he served in the Norwegian Home Guard’s Rapid Response Unit. Following his military tenure, he studied medicine at the University of Oslo from 2000 to 2008. After graduation, he completed his medical internship at Narvik Hospital. Before establishing his career in the fintech space, Dr. Ozan Özerk started off as a medical doctor. 

Dr. Ozan Özerk’s entrepreneurial career seeds were sowed in the late 1990s. But the real breakthrough came as he Co-founded Norsk Ideutvikling in 2005, an online media company famous for its social networking site Biip.no. Biip.no was an early version social media endeavor similar to Facebook which was largely successful in Norway, reaching almost the entirety of the young population it targeted. Biip.no was acquired by Egmont and Nettavisen for an estimated valuation of 100+ million krone in 2008. Dr. Ozan Özerk stayed on until 2010.

After the Biip.no exit, Dr. Ozan Özerk worked as a medical doctor until 2015. He held positions as an emergency room doctor in the cities of Narvik, Bærum, and Moss.

Dr. Ozan Özerk made the shift to his current career in the fintech industry in 2015. The early years saw several small ventures that helped him discover and understand the fintech space and form the grounds for today’s successful businesses. 

2018 stands out as the inflection point in Dr. Ozan Özerk’s fintech career. He consolidated his early ventures under OpenPayd, which today is a well-known brand in the fintech industry. OpenPayd was founded and is still headquartered in London, now with offices in Bulgaria, Turkey, Malta, Belgium and the USA. OpenPayd offers Banking as a Service (BaaS) solutions to businesses.

This year also marks the foundation of three other successful businesses for Dr. Ozan Özerk. 

European Merchant Bank (EMBank), based in Lithuania, was founded in late November 2018. EMBank has a banking license from the European Central Bank. 

Ozan SuperApp was also founded by Dr. Özerk in 2018. Headquartered in London with affiliates and offices in Turkey and the EU, Ozan SuperApp is a new generation fintech company that offers financial solutions to both individuals and businesses.

His third venture founded in 2018 is Eurotrader. Eurotrader is a fully licensed and regulated retail broker in forex, stocks, indices and commodities.

As one of the pioneers of the industry, Dr. Ozan Özerk frequently shares his thoughts and projections on the future of fintech through interviews and opinion-pieces. He also has a strong standpoint on issues regarding financial inclusion and equality, often speaking and writing on these topics.