Libra Association Taps Saumya Bhavsar as General Counsel for Payments Subsidiary

The Libra Association, the organization developing the Facebook-backed cryptocurrency project libra, has hired a former banking regulator and industry veteran as general counsel for its payments subsidiary.

The hire, Saumya Bhavsar, will assist Libra Networks in "launching and managing a compliant payment system," the Swiss-based association said Wednesday. That could be crucial for a project that faces regulatory headwinds at seemingly every turn.

Bhavsar will be calling upon 25 years in banking regulation across the public and private sector. She was a senior attorney at the U.S. national banking regulator the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

She then pivoted to private sector regulatory roles at Euroclear, UBS and Credit Suisse, her LinkedIn profile shows. Bhavsar spent the most recent three years at Credit Suisse.