Built by the team at Second Life to power its own digital economy, Tilia is now the leading payment platform for game publishers, metaverse creators, and NFT providers around the world.
Tilia’s parent company, Linden Lab, has been running Second Life for nearly 20 years. During that time, the team behind Tilia saw the massive potential for creating real-world value from in-game assets.
Payment processing and virtual wallets weren’t new ideas, but Tilia knew the game-changer would be creating a legally compliant way to convert virtual funds back into money that can be used in the real world.
Drawing from its expertise in virtual worlds, Tilia developed an integrated suite of products to process payments, manage in-world transactions, and process payouts into real money deposited directly into user bank accounts.
At the same time, Tilia assembled a world-renowned team of legal and security professionals to manage the burden of establishing and maintaining regulatory compliance, transaction security, and fraud management.
Partners
As a growing contributor to the virtual space, Tilia is partnering with some of the biggest developer platforms, allowing creators to maximize growth by streamlining the development process.
Brad Oberwager has spent his entire career in technology and consumer focused companies as an entrepreneur and board member. Currently, he sits on the boards of two public companies, Asure Software (NASDAQ: ASUR) and Better World (NASDAQ: BWACU). He is the chairman of two companies he founded, Jyve and Sundia and is also on the board of TEGSCO (aka AutoReturn). He owned Bare Snacks, acquired by PepsiCo in 2018. Brad was Vice-chair of YPO International, a global organization of 25,000 CEOs. Brad received his BS from Georgetown University, his MBA from the Wharton School and lives in San Francisco.
J. Randall Waterfield is Chairman of The Board & Chief Executive Officer of Waterfield Holdings. Waterfield traces its roots back to 1928, when Richard H. Waterfield founded Waterfield Mortgage Company and Waterfield Insurance Agency in Fort Wayne, Indiana. After selling the largest private mortgage company in the US and largest Indiana based bank in 2006 and 2007, respectively, Waterfield has diversified into technology, real estate, asset management and merchant banking. Waterfield today has over $2 billion in managed assets.
Mr. Waterfield was the 2017-2018 Chairman of Young Presidents Organization (YPO) International (www.ypo.org), an organization of over 30,000 CEOs from over 140 countries with combined revenue of over US$ 9 Trillion. He is also a director of SMTC Corporation (NASDAQ: SMTX), Red Oak Partners, WTI Holdings, and former Chairman of YPO New York City, among other board positions further detailed below. Prior to joining Waterfield, Mr. Waterfield was employed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, where he was responsible for the small cap growth portfolios. Prior to his employment with Goldman, Sachs, & Co., Mr. Waterfield trained at Fidelity Investments in Boston, and Prudential Securities in New York. Mr. Waterfield graduated from Harvard University in 1996; he holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation (CFA) and is a member of MENSA.
Raj Date was the first-ever Deputy Director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). As the Bureau’s second-ranking official, he helped steward the CFPB’s strategy, its operations, and its policy agenda. He also served on the senior staff committee of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, and as a statutory deputy to the FDIC Board. Before being appointed Deputy Director, Raj acted as the interim leader of the new agency, serving as the Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury. He led the CFPB for most of the first six months after its launch.
Currently, Raj is the Managing Partner of Fenway Summer, an advisory and investment firm focused on financial services and financial technology. In that capacity, he chairs the investment committee of Fenway Summer Ventures, a fintech venture capital fund, and works with clients of FS Vector, the fintech advisory firm. He also serves as a Director for a number of innovative firms in financial services: Prosper, the marketplace lender; Green Dot, the bank holding company; Circle, the digital asset firm; Grasshopper, a de novo bank; and College Ave, a private student lender. He is a graduate of the College of Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley (highest honors) and the Harvard Law School (magna cum laude).
E. Drew Soinski is a Senior Payments Executive and Managing Director in the Corporate & Investment Bank (CIB) at J.P. Morgan. He is a thought leader and executive sponsor working with sales and business development teams to develop strategic payment solutions for mid-sized and enterprise corporate clients in the technology, media & telecommunications (TMT), lodging, real estate, gaming, amusement parks, sports venues and concessionaires and consumer retail industries.
He focuses on new client acquisitions, retention and supporting current clients as the payments industry evolves. For example, Drew supported the firm’s blockchain teams in launching J.P. Morgan’s metaverse strategy across the firm and speaks internally and externally on the topic. Prior to his current role, Drew worked in the Merchant Services business focused on TMT clients in the Corporate and Community bank, as well as representing Chase’s issuing assets globally. He brings a wealth of specific lodging, metaverse and regulated gambling industry knowledge to the company.
Prior to J.P. Morgan, Drew has over 35 years’ experience on the acquiring side, beginning his career at Nabanco, now Chase Paymentech. There, he built a market-leading lodging industry portfolio and also pioneered the first fully integrated POS and PMS card processing platform integrations for global hotels, casinos and cruise lines. In addition, Drew has held enterprise sales and relationship management leadership positions with First Horizon (now Elavon) and NPC (now Bank of America Merchant Services), within whose portfolios were some of the most prolific consumer retailers, QSRs, gambling and lodging institutions in the world today.
Aston is the CFO of Tilia LLC, where he’s responsible for the business of Tilia, and also serves on the Board of Directors of Tilia. Aston is also the CFO of Linden Research, Inc., the parent company of Tilia LLC, and as CFO of Linden, Aston oversees all financial matters of the company. Aston has over ten years of senior management experience at gaming / virtual world companies in Silicon Valley. Prior to Linden Lab and Tilia, Aston served as Corporate Controller at Trion Worlds, Inc. Aston began his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers where he worked on a wide range of clients including Chevron, URS and SunPower. He is a CPA and received his Bachelor of Commerce from the University of British Columbia - Sauder School of Business.
At Tilia, we believe that great work comes from a culture of excellence and collaboration. Our executive leadership team is dedicated to setting the highest standards in terms of innovation, performance, and client service.
Games, virtual worlds and creator-driven platforms are constantly evolving - and so is Tilia. We’re invested in growing our technology and services to meet our partners' changing needs, no matter where that leads. Let’s build the new digital economy together.