For Alyona Dehrik-Shevtsova, ambition has never been confined by borders. Born on December 17, 1987, in Ukraine, Alyona has spent the past two decades transforming her academic foundation, sharp business instincts, and deep sense of social responsibility into an international career that now extends far beyond her home country.
While her impact today spans Europe, the Middle East, and the UK, Alyona’s story began in the lecture halls of Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University, one of Ukraine’s most prestigious institutions. She built an unusually broad educational base there, completing four rigorous degrees over nearly a decade.
She earned her Specialist degree in Law in 2014, a Magister degree in International Business in 2010, a Master’s in Psychology in 2017, and a Master’s in Finance and Banking Systems in 2018. This unique blend of legal, economic, and human sciences became the blueprint for her multifaceted leadership style, practical yet people-centered, driven yet grounded in social awareness.
Building Companies, Building Trust
Alyona’s first significant step into the business world came in 2009, when she founded Leo Partners LLC. As its Director and sole shareholder, she organized workflows, developed strategic plans, and instilled rigorous compliance and discipline across every department. Her approach combined big-picture vision with hands-on oversight, setting the stage for a steady stream of ventures that would follow.
By the early 2010s, she had expanded her sights to fintech. As the founder of LeoGaming, Alyona oversaw the creation of Ukraine’s first payment system designed specifically for the booming online gaming sector. LeoGaming made digital top-ups for games faster, easier, and more securely: an early glimpse into Alyona’s commitment to blending efficiency with user trust.
One standout moment was her 2018 negotiation with Rakuten, owner of Viber. That deal briefly brought LeoGaming’s payment rails to ViberOut, adding a real-time payments feature to millions of chats. Though she later exited the company’s shareholding, the project demonstrated her readiness to secure global partnerships well before the phrase “borderless fintech” was common.
It’s worth noting that the LEO International Payment System, which once stood among Ukraine’s top five non-bank payment processors, wrapped up operations about two years ago. But its spirit, transparent, agile, and built for the digital age, lives on in Alyona’s next chapter.
SENDS: Securing Fintech’s Future
Today, her flagship fintech project is SENDS, operated through SMARTFLOW PAYMENTS LIMITED. As a person of significant control, Alyona Dehrik-Shevtsova continues to steer SENDS’ development with the same sharp focus she brought to LeoGaming.
Fully authorized by the UK Financial Conduct Authority as an Electronic Money Institution since 2017, SENDS provides individuals and businesses with secure money transfers, multi-currency accounts, and integrated payment acquiring.
Under Alyona’s leadership, SENDS processes over 30 million transactions annually, with a yearly turnover approaching €1.8 billion and generating about €50 million in revenue and €15 million in net profit.
Direct integration with major payment systems like MasterCard and Visa gives SENDS the scale to deliver fast, reliable payouts to more than 180 countries, backed by round-the-clock support and clear, accessible compliance measures.
More than just a payments provider, SENDS reflects Alyona’s belief that trust is built through transparency. Twice-yearly audits and openly shared compliance reviews ensure that clients see exactly how their data and funds are handled, a standard she extends to every project she touches.
Leo Messenger: Privacy and Connection for a Global Community
In parallel, Alyona leads Leo Messenger, a next-generation secure messaging platform. Headquartered in London, Leo Messenger addresses a growing demand for confidentiality in personal and professional communications.
Its end-to-end encryption (E2EE) ensures that messages, whether text, audio, or video, are scrambled during transmission and readable only by the intended recipients. Even if intercepted, conversations stay protected. The app also offers group chats, disappearing messages, reminders, secure calls, and screen locks like the Leo PIN, all designed to balance usability with robust security.
Crucially, Leo Messenger is built to integrate naturally with SENDS. Payment confirmations, peer-to-peer transfers, and file sharing can happen directly within encrypted chats, giving expats, remote teams, and global communities a frictionless way to connect and transact safely across borders.
The Leo Foundation: Where Fintech and Humanitarian Work Meet
For Alyona Dehrik, building resilient systems goes far beyond secure payments, it extends directly to rebuilding lives. Her commitment to this is embodied in the Leo Foundation, a non-profit she founded to mobilize aid for some of Ukraine’s most vulnerable communities during times of crisis.
What began as targeted support for veterans and children with special needs shifted rapidly in 2022 when the Russian invasion displaced thousands. Since then, the Foundation’s reach has grown to assist more than 500 refugee families, delivering practical help like coordinated food distributions, safe temporary housing, and financial relief in key cities, including Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipro, and Kharkiv.
Alyona’s team focused early on healthcare, covering urgent needs that public systems couldn’t manage alone. Children in need of life-saving surgeries, 23 operations to date, received specialized treatments through partnerships with Ukraine’s largest hospital networks, including Dobrobut.
Meanwhile, in Odesa, the Foundation backed the full renovation and re-equipment of the city’s busiest maternity hospital, supporting safe births for thousands of families each year.
Education is equally central to the Foundation’s mission. Fifteen promising students at the Kyiv Institute of International Relations received scholarships covering both tuition and living costs, while five outdated lecture halls were modernized, and a new computer lab opened to benefit the university’s 3,500-strong student body.
On the ground, six first aid training workshops have helped school staff, National Guard members, frontline volunteers, and Ministry of Defense teams respond better under pressure, life skills shared exactly where they’re needed most.
Beyond classrooms and clinics, the Leo Foundation’s broad humanitarian program tackles everyday survival. In Mykolaiv Oblast, a region home to 1.3 million people, the Foundation funded the installation of water purification systems in five hospitals.
More than 4,000 aid kits filled with hygiene products, baby supplies, and medical essentials have reached families forced from their homes. Tactical support for defenders is part of the same network: trench candles providing 2,400 hours of light and heat, drones, protective gear, and vehicles have all strengthened local capacity, including direct support for the successful liberation of Kharkiv Oblast.
Alyona Dehrik-ShevtsovaCommunity Engagement and Mentorship
Alyona’s belief in practical, local support also shows through her volunteer efforts. She regularly donates time and resources to youth mentorship, financial literacy workshops, and regional economic projects. She’s also an active advocate for female empowerment in business and tech, using her role as Director and 100% shareholder of Leo Partners LLC to back female-led startups and support initiatives at Taras Shevchenko University.
Her speaking engagements in cities like Warsaw and Dubai spotlight the importance of gender inclusivity in fintech and leadership, helping the next generation of women imagine themselves in decision-making roles.
A Legacy Built on Purpose
At only 36, Alyona Dehrik-Shevtsova stands as a new archetype of what international entrepreneurship can look like: deeply technical, strategically bold, and genuinely human-centered. Her layered education, in business, law, psychology, finance, shows up daily in how she blends regulatory insight, financial infrastructure, and an understanding of people’s needs.
From her first company workflows at Leo Partners LLC to groundbreaking fintech solutions like SENDS and privacy-focused Leo Messenger, to vital on-the-ground work through the Leo Foundation, Alyona’s story proves that big ideas can, and should, serve real communities.
As her Ukrainian chapter winds down and her focus shifts firmly to Europe, the Middle East, and the UK, one thing remains clear: her model isn’t just about scaling businesses, it’s about expanding trust, resilience, and practical help, region by region, conversation by conversation, one secure transaction at a time.
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