Bio
Urs Gubser began his career at UBS in Switzerland as a front-office developer working across foreign exchange, commodities and equity derivatives. Alongside this role, he launched his first startup, DWC. He later moved to New York with UBS and sold the company.
After working at UBS and Millennium Partners, a New York-based hedge fund, Urs left the corporate world to co-found two internet startups. The first was an e-commerce venture built around a shop-and-chat concept. The second, Allinstant, sought to bring email and instant messaging together on a unified communications platform. Allinstant raised Series B financing but ultimately closed two and a half years later, following limited market traction and a broader downturn in the internet startup sector. Urs subsequently returned to consulting, working with Deutsche Bank and Bank of America.
In 2007, he joined Citi in a newly established unit responsible for transforming the bank’s operational infrastructure. Its mandate combined the development of scalable, automated platforms with the standardisation of business data and workflows across systems and processes. Urs led the team that built a global trade-routing platform for cash securities transactions.
Three years later, he moved with Citi to Hong Kong, where he was tasked with mapping cash flows across Asia as the foundation for a broader transformation programme. His experience in Hong Kong—particularly observing the widespread use of the Octopus card—sparked a lasting interest in payments. On returning to New York, he joined Citi’s emerging payments group within its global consumer banking business, where he worked on mobile payment wallets.
In 2014, after almost 17 years abroad, Urs and his family returned to Switzerland. He joined SIX as Head of E-Commerce Product and designed a strategic programme to strengthen the company’s position in e-commerce payments. The programme addressed functional gaps, opened new markets and distribution channels, and introduced capabilities intended to move SIX ahead of its competitors. Between 2017 and 2018, SIX’s e-commerce sales margin increased by approximately 30%, with the programme contributing to that growth. Urs documented the ideas behind this work in ThingsBy7.
Drawing on experience across banking, technology, payments and entrepreneurship, Urs approaches businesses and their processes from both a commercial and a technical perspective. He is particularly interested in recognising emerging developments early and turning them into practical strategies, products and platforms.
Urs holds an MBA from the University of Manchester. He occasionally speaks about the future and writes about developments in society, culture and technology. He is also an enthusiastic photographer and a lifelong tinkerer with interests ranging from retro computing to the Internet of Things.