With more than 13 years’ experience behind him, Taylor previously headed up the finance team for Vocalink-owned Zapp, the scheme operator of digital payment app solution Pay by Bank.

When Vocalink was acquired by Mastercard for £700m in 2017, Taylor became a finance director for the financial services giant, a role he held until joining Yoyo in May 2018.

Before Vocalink, Taylor spent four years at Barclays. He first joined its investment arm, Barclays Investment Bank (formerly known as Barclays Capital) for three years, where he worked in several executive-facing roles, before moving to Barclays Group to support key strategic initiatives, including its Transform Programme.

In his new role at Yoyo, Taylor will oversee the development of the company’s operational finance function, whilst using his extensive commercial experience to support the business in this time of rapid growth.

In just 12 months Yoyo has created and launched an award-winning payments and loyalty app for the UK’s third largest coffee chain, Caffè Nero, completed a £12 million Series B investment round, and partnered with Starling Bank to become one of the first UK companies to reveal the potential of the new PSD2 and Open Banking frameworks.

On top of all this, Yoyo gained more than 800,000 users, as well as 370,000 monthly active users for the award-winning Yoyo payments and loyalty platform, which processes over millions transactions a month.

In his new role, Taylor will report to Yoyo co-founder and CEO Michael Rolph.

Rolph said: “This is the perfect moment for someone of James’ experience to join Yoyo. We had a brilliant 2017 and 2018 is already set to far exceed last year’s growth.

“One of James’ first tasks will be to join our work on some pretty incredible and unique partnership deals across the UK, Europe and beyond. We can’t say too much at this stage, but we can safely say they are going to further cement Yoyo’s position as the payments and loyalty marketing platform for banks, caterers and retailers alike.”

Taylor added: “I’m delighted to be joining the talented team at Yoyo at this exciting stage in the development of the business.

“The award-winning products and technology that have already been developed by Yoyo are revolutionising what customers and retailers now expect from a payments and loyalty experience.

“Through completely unique strategic partnerships, whether with Caffè Nero or Starling Bank, Yoyo has demonstrated the enormous potential in utilising basket data to build a mobile first, digitally led proposition, delivering demonstrable value to both customers and retailers.

I look forward to supporting the business in driving continued profitable growth.”