Ex-TSB CEO Pester to Debut Digital Payments Social Network

Paul Pester, the ex-CEO of TSB Bank, is rolling out a social network centered around digital payments, a report from Bloomberg says.

It will be called Loop, and will facilitate payments between family and friends.

The company has raised a seed round of investment and will also be looking to bring in more money next year.

Pester is partnering with Anthony Thomson, who founded Metro Bank and Atom Bank, and Matthew Donaldson, the former head of Compare the Market.

Bloomberg notes that there’s no indication if Loop has a connection with the Saudi Arabian digital payments business of the same name.

Pester was forced out of his TSB Bank position several years ago after a large IT crash that locked millions of people out of their accounts. The crash saw customers locked out of their accounts for weeks, not letting them access their own money.

And there was also a rise in fraud attacks around that time. TSB had a hard time getting its footing back after the incident. PYMNTS writes that the crash had been blamed on the process of moving the banking tech to a new platform before it had been properly tested.

Read more: Report: TSB Bank IT Crash Caused By Inadequate Testing

The crash slashed parent company Sabadell’s profits by 50% last year, with an investigation determining that TSB didn’t really understand the way the system was supposed to work. Sabadell’s IT arm, Sabis, had been ill-prepared to use the new platform, with one of the data centers not being tested before the launch.

PYMNTS writes that Pester gave up bonuses of around $2.6 million upon leaving. In his statement upon leaving, he cast blame on Sabis, saying the report had been a “scattergun approach.” He said Sabis “rolled the dice” by only running tests on one of the two data centers. And he said he and the board hadn’t known about that decision.