Mike Wons, who served as CTO for the state of Illinois from 2015 to 2018, will be PayIt’s new voice on the board.
“I have had the unique opportunity to work with the PayIt team and their configurable digital government platform for the past three years,” Wons said in a press release. “I am excited about the opportunity to join PayIt in an advisory role to help them accelerate their strategy execution.”
As Illinois CTO, Wons worked alongside state CIO Hardik Bhatt, who is now working at Amazon Web Services. During that time, the duo’s Department of Innovation and Technology worked on increasing mobile citizen engagement and reimagined its strategy. They also helped start a series of blockchain pilot projects to test out the emerging technology.
Wons left the state government at the start of 2018 to join the risk, compliance and cybersecurity firm SAI Global. He remains that company's CTO and global product officer.
PayIt, a GovTech 100 company, operates on a business model where it builds out digital services at no cost to its government customers, then makes revenue off transaction fees. It also offers chatbots to help citizens navigate those services, and document management for citizens and government service customers to keep track of their information.
“Mobile payments are the foundation for helping improve the overall services that government provides to citizens,” Wons said in the statement.
