When Enny van de Velden used to go to a James Bond film with her father, she would admire the science fiction-like things that happened on the silver screen, such as doors that opened via an iris scan. Her father saw something else. “Watch out,” he said, “that’s how we’re going to pay later.”
These turned out to be prophetic words from the founder of payment provider CCV (Computer Center Cor van de Velden) who died on 26 May. What started in 1958 as an accountancy firm on the Apeldoornseweg in Arnhem, on the third floor, grew into an international company.
Among the customers were the large gas stations. When the number of robberies at gas stations increased in the eighties, his customers wanted to get rid of the cash and asked the Arnhem accountant for a solution. This is how the first ATM machine came to be in the Netherlands.
Van de Velden, son of a postman, grew up in a Hilversum family, as the youngest of four children. He went to secondary school, then to HBS and successfully applied for a job at an accountancy firm, where he met his wife Bep. Together they founded accountancy firm Van de Velden.
They were called a ‘golden duo’. ‘She was the face to the outside world, he was the entrepreneur who worked in the background’, says daughter Enny. ‘That combination has worked well for years.’ Although the marriage wouldn’t last anyway: ‘They both had strong characters. It turned out that it didn’t work to combine work and private life so emphatically.’
Van de Velden was regarded as a visionary and pioneer at the same time. Someone who saw opportunities and seized them. Like in 1967, when he went to America for an audience with the family-owned company EKW, which had developed a computerized accounting system. He flew back as a licensee in Europe – a breakthrough.
His company expanded rapidly through acquisitions and investments in computer technology. Van de Velden would eventually lead ten offices in Europe with more than a thousand employees. As a director he was enthusiastic and strict. From the age of 75, he was invariably in the office on Tuesdays for meetings, a day known among staff as Super Tuesday.
He loved to challenge employees, but also did not forget to reward their efforts. There were trips to Prague, Vienna, even New York, with staff and directors split between two planes. Enny: ‘Should a plane crash, then the company should be able to continue, was his thought.’ As a fierce anti-smoker, he also offered a bonus of 1,000 guilders to those in his company who would stop smoking for at least a year.
Van de Velden found his listing in the Quote 500, with an estimated net worth of 96 million. Not only because he was someone who liked to use his tea bag three times, but also because he suddenly became aware of his own vulnerability. He spoke to Jort Kelder about it in vain. From the moment his name appears in the columns of Quote appeared, he always took a stick with him when he went for a walk in the woods.
In 2012 he retired. Daughter Enny took over. “Those stripes on your sleeve, they’re not there, you have to earn them,” he said, after which he wished her success and actually stayed in the background at the company that was his life’s work.
On the day of his death, the flags were flown at half-mast at CCV’s head office in Arnhem. Cor van de Velden, the man who got the Netherlands to pay by debit card, was 91 years old.