Boku names David Oliver as its first chief data and AI officer

Boku Creates Chief Data & AI Officer Role as Payments Company Scales

Boku, a payments platform serving global merchants, appointed David Oliver as its first Chief Data & AI Officer, elevating data and AI work to the executive leadership level. Oliver, who joined Boku from NatWest in 2024, will report directly to CEO Stuart Neal.

The move formalizes work Boku has conducted over the past 18 months through pilots, automation, and internal investment. The new function will consolidate these efforts under a single operating model focused on building the tools, governance, and infrastructure needed to deploy AI safely at scale.

Immediate Priorities

Oliver's first task is embedding AI infrastructure across Boku's business. The goal is to deploy AI consistently and securely across teams and departments, allowing the company to optimize performance and accelerate delivery.

The timing reflects shifts in the payments industry itself. Boku operates a local payment network covering more than seven billion customer accounts across 60 countries, including digital wallets, account-to-account schemes, and direct carrier billing. The company sees agentic AI processes-where systems take autonomous actions within defined parameters-as a significant opportunity for the payments and retail sectors.

What This Means for Strategy

For executives overseeing data and AI initiatives, the appointment signals how established payments firms are organizing around these capabilities. Rather than keeping data and AI scattered across departments, Boku is centralizing governance and infrastructure.

Oliver said in a statement: "Boku already operates at significant scale, and there's an exciting opportunity to now turn that scale into repeatable intelligence that will improve decision-making, strengthen operations and help teams deliver better outcomes for our customers."

CEO Stuart Neal added that new AI technologies create opportunities to strengthen Boku's services and serve customers more efficiently, positioning the Data & AI function as central to the company's next growth phase.

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