GoCardless Hires Paul Stoddard as Its New President

Direct-to-bank payments firm GoCardless has appointed Mastercard's Paul Stoddard as president.

Stoddart brings a wealth of experience to GoCardless. He was named as chief executive officer of Vocalink after its acquisition by Mastercard and subsequently promoted to president of Mastercard's New Payment Platforms where he led the establishment and growth of a business unit that expanded the card scheme's role in payments beyond cards to account-to-account payments. Prior to Vocalink he was co-head of Corporate Finance at Barclaycard. He also spent 10 years at NatWest where he held a number of senior roles including in their merchant acquiring and e-commerce business, Worldpay.

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GoCardless will benefit from Stoddart's expertise as it doubles down on account-to-account payments, with plans to release its Variable Recurring Payment feature shortly in the UK and expand Instant Bank Pay, its product for one-off payments, across Europe.

Hiroki Takeuchi, co-founder and CEO at GoCardless, says: "This year marks an inflection point at GoCardless as we expand beyond recurring payments to serve a broader range of customer segments and payment use cases. Having the right people to lead us on this journey is critical as we scale our business, develop new products and services with open banking and explore new markets. Paul has a unique depth of experience across both card and non-card payments and is well-positioned to help us seize the opportunities that will make GoCardless a force to be reckoned with in the payments space."

Stoddart's appointment comes just months after GoCardless sealed a $312 million funding round in February. In the intervening time, the firm has released its second open banking-enabled feature, Verified Mandates, in the UK and Success+, its 'payment intelligence' product which uses machine learning to identify the optimal day to recover failed payments, in the US.

In the UK, the firm recently signed its first Variable Recurring Payment customers and plans to introduce VRPs in both 'sweeping' and 'non-sweeping' forms over the coming months. By mid-2022, GoCardless will also integrate PayTo into its global bank payment platform in time for the regulated launch in Australia.

(Source: Finextra)