Semafone Appoints New CFO as Company Growth Continues to Rocket

September 12, 2017         By: Payment Week

Boston and Guildford, U.K. – Sept. 12, 2017 Semafone, the leading provider of data security and compliance solutions for contact centers, has appointed John Donaldson to the role of Chief Finance Officer (CFO), as the company prepares to build on its record growth in 2016.

Donaldson brings extensive finance and commercial experience in the international telecommunications, technology and software sectors, most recently serving as CFO at Nowtel Group.

“It’s an incredibly exciting time to be taking the finance helm at Semafone,” John Donaldson, Semafone CFO, said. “The company is going from strength to strength not just here in the U.K., but also in North America and Australia. It’s rewarding to join such a highly experienced team and to add my own knowledge of growing international companies to Semafone’s already solid business successes.”

Semafone CEO Tim Critchley said, “We had an extremely successful year in 2016, realising a 65 percent increase in revenue and growing our roster of blue-chip Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 clients. I’m confident that John’s appointment will help continue this momentum and keep us on target to meet our ambitious growth goals.

He brings with him an impressive track record of driving business growth, and has the technology and software expertise to back up his commercial skills, notably with ‘hosting services’ and the associated SaaS/recurring revenue business models which is becoming increasingly important for Semafone as we add more hosted platforms. We’re thrilled to have John join the Semafone team.”

Semafone’s patented data capture method is fast being recognized as the global standard for gathering sensitive customer information securely, over the phone. The company’s solution has been adopted under licence by many of its peers in the contact center and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance market.

Semafone’s solutions allow customers to provide sensitive information to customer service representatives (CSRs), by entering the numbers directly into their phone’s keypad, rather than reading them aloud. The keypad tones are disguised so that numbers cannot be identified by their sound, leaving the CSR free to continue the conversation with the caller. This means that customer data is protected and the organization complies with industry regulations.


About Semafone

Semafone provides software to contact centers so they can take personal data securely over the telephone. Semafone’s patented data capture method collects sensitive information such as payment card or bank details and social security numbers directly from the customer’s telephone keypad for processing. This prevents personal data from entering the contact center, which protects against the risk of fraud and the associated reputational damage, ensuring compliance with industry regulations such as PCI DSS.

The company was founded in 2009 and now supports customers in 22 countries on five continents. Semafone is vertically agnostic and its extensive customer base includes companies such as Aviva Canada, Amica Mutual Insurance, British Sky Broadcasting, Pethealth, Rogers Communications and TVG.

BT offers a hosted version of Semafone’s technology - Cloud Contact PCI. Major investors of Semafone include Octopus Investments and BGF (Business Growth Fund).

Semafone has achieved the four leading security and payment accreditations: ISO 27001:2013, PA-DSS certification for Cardprotect its payment solution, PCI DSS Level 1 Service Provider and is a registered Visa Level 1 Merchant Agent. To learn more, visit www.semafone.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.