Background & Biography
Kon’s earlier career included payments and commercial partnerships at PayPal, eBay and Vodafone. Utrust’s September 2018 appointment announcement identified her as its new vice president of global partnerships. It recorded her prior responsibility for marketplaces and large-enterprise partnerships at PayPal in the United Kingdom, and earlier eBay roles in Italy and the UK.
In an original interview with Collabs, Kon described studying economics and business administration, followed by marketing management, in Italy and Denmark. She also explained her move from established commerce businesses into cryptocurrency payments. That account provides background to her operating interests without implying that conventional payment problems disappear merely by introducing a blockchain.
By the time of her subsequent Utrust interviews, she was the company’s CEO. The 2026 Paris Blockchain Week speaker biography identifies her current Circle role and regional responsibility. Historical Utrust captions should therefore not be used as her present job title.
Notable Contributions
Kon’s Utrust work concerned the practical relationship between a customer paying in cryptocurrency and a merchant receiving funds. In her Collabs interview, she described a model in which merchants could choose cryptocurrency or fiat settlement. The distinction is important: accepting a crypto-funded payment does not necessarily mean the merchant wants to hold a volatile asset.
Utrust’s acquisition by Elrond, now MultiversX, was announced on January 11, 2022, according to xMoney’s own historical documentation. MultiversX’s transformation materials identify Utrust’s later branding as xMoney Crypto. This is corporate history, not a claim that Kon still manages the business or that she alone created its technology.
At Circle, her verified responsibilities concern partnerships and business development across EMEA. In a January 2025 interview, she described working with a range of partners, including banks and remittance companies, on uses of stablecoins and blockchain technology. The focus is distribution and implementation rather than personal control of the underlying networks.
Why Katharos.ai Follows Sanja Kon
Payments are a concrete test of digital-asset utility. A payment arrangement must work for the sender, the recipient and the institutions that handle conversion and settlement. Fees, access, timing and operational responsibility all matter, even when the blockchain transfer itself is fast.
Katharos.ai follows Kon’s attributable work at this interface between traditional payments and digital assets. Her experience spans merchant acceptance and partnerships around stablecoins, allowing coverage to examine what changes for a business rather than treating every transfer as evidence of mass adoption. A partnership announcement must be distinguished from a service available to every customer in every country.
Areas to Follow
Areas to follow include stablecoin distribution, cross-border payment use cases and the relationship between fiat entry and exit points and blockchain settlement. The Global Finance and Technology Network lists Kon among the speakers in its Point Zero Forum discussion of new stablecoin value propositions. That record establishes participation in the discussion, not ownership of every idea expressed by the panel.
Kon has also discussed education and participation in digital finance. In her 2025 interview, she explained the motivation behind her book, Web3 and Blockchain 4 Women, as making the subject more approachable. Educational activity should be assessed on the clarity and usefulness of its content rather than treated as investment advice.
Reporting Scope
This profile separates current Circle responsibilities from earlier Utrust and xMoney associations. It does not describe Kon as the original founder of Utrust: the dated company announcement documents her joining in 2018. The focus is on her verified executive and partnership work.
Statements about faster or cheaper payments are assessed as specific product claims, not universal properties of stablecoins. Real outcomes depend on fees, counterparties, redemption arrangements and local availability. The geographic classification reflects her professional remit and documented UK work, rather than assumptions about citizenship or personal residence.
Areas of Influence Category
Exchanges & Infrastructure is the primary category, reflecting Kon’s work on the commercial connections that make digital-asset payment services usable. Her influence lies in payments operations, distribution partnerships and communication about adoption, rather than protocol authorship or cryptocurrency price predictions.
Current Position
Kon is Circle’s Vice President of Partnerships and Business Development for EMEA. Her Utrust CEO role is historical; the company’s 2018 announcement records her joining rather than founding the original business. United Kingdom denotes documented professional context, not nationality or current residence.
Photo Credit
Archival photograph: Sanja Kon at Web Summit, November 4, 2021. Photo: Diarmuid Greene / Web Summit / Sportsfile, CC BY 2.0; cropped to 16:9.
Source notice: Information and images are attributed to the external sources listed. Katharos.ai does not endorse the subjects or claims described and does not independently certify the authenticity of every source statement or image.