Plaid taps Adyen executive to steer its European operations

U.S. financial technology firm Plaid has hired former Adyen executive Brian Dammeir as its recent head of Europe, the corporate told CNBC exclusively.

Dammeir was previously Adyen’s global head of unified commerce, a job he led out of the Dutch payment company’s San Francisco office. Dammeir oversaw a key a part of Adyen’s business — joining up different payment experiences including online, in-store, and app-based, in a single single platform.

Dammeir will take over the reins from Ripsy Bandourian, who previously oversaw the corporate’s expansion across Europe, at a pivotal time for the corporate because it branches out into other areas of finance including payments and lending.

Plaid, which was last valued by investors at $13.4 billion in a funding round, offers technology that allows financial technology apps to retrieve data from people’s bank accounts and initiate payments on their behalf.

It is an element of a movement in finance and technology referred to as “open banking,” which inspires the opening up of monetary data to non-bank financial institutions to encourage competition within the sector.

Dammeir told CNBC in an exclusive interview Monday that the thing he was most excited by in joining the corporate was “the chance around open finance,” an evolution on open banking that appears to innovate in all areas of finance, including lending.

“Once we take into consideration Europe, it’s about how can we be more relevant globally … how can we discover an increasing number of use cases outside of our place to begin in fintech.” Dammeir told CNBC.

“Without delay, that is really about expanding into account-to-account payments in addition to into lending and traditional banking,” he added.

Bandourian, a former Booking.com executive, was appointed the corporate’s first head of Europe last yr. She worked with Keith Grose, formerly Plaid’s head of international, who has since left the business to affix business-to-business billing platform Sequence.

“Ripsy left Plaid after leading the business through a pivotal time and constructing continued momentum within the region,” a Plaid spokesperson told CNBC. Plaid declined to comment on the rationale behind Bandourian’s exit from the firm.

Dammeir didn’t take his decision to quit Adyen evenly. The longtime fintech executive held positions at Adyen in its North American and European offices for greater than eight years, starting in product, before graduating onto general management and strategy across North America and Europe.

Dammeir said that Plaid desired to encourage a broader movement toward so-called “open finance,” which might enable the creation of progressive recent products in lending, insurance, and other parts of the finance ecosystem.

Payments has been a giant focus for Plaid beyond financial data, with payment volumes on the platform having climbed greater than 90% within the U.K. in 2023.

Now, Plaid is trying to work with partners beyond just fintechs, Dammeir indicated, without sharing names of any of its potential future partners. The corporate already works with the likes of Monzo, Checkout.com, Public, and Moneybox.