Enfuce, the European card issuing and processing powerhouse, has bolstered its management team with pivotal senior appointments as it gears up for further rapid expansion in 2023.
The Finnish-based cloud-native platform pioneer has appointed Andy Patton as Chief Commercial Officer (CCO), Jessica Collingwood as Chief People Officer (CPO), Vanessa Schotes as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Fern Blackler as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), all of whom have exceptional track records gained at companies including American Express, Virgin Group, Celonis and The London Stock Exchange.
The new hires mark an exciting moment in Enfuce’s successful growth trajectory, following its recent €45 million in Series C funding that was secured from Vitruvian Partners, a global investment firm which supports ambitious, high-growth companies. Enfuce is using the funding to kickstart its expansion across Europe in 2023, and its new executive hires will accelerate momentum for Enfuce as it swiftly becomes the go-to partner for card issuance and embedded payments services in the B2B and B2C spaces.
Andy Patton is Enfuce's new Chief Commercial Officer (CCO). Andy has worked at some of the world's largest financial services companies, including American Express, where he held a number of senior commercial roles and drove transformative results. He has successfully translated this track record and outcomes to fintech scale-ups, including Banking as a Service provider Contis, where he held the position of CCO.
Prior to his payment industry commercial and business development roles, Andy held a number of senior marketing positions, including at Emirates Airline, where he led the development of its award-winning frequent flyer programme “Skywards”, which has been consistently voted best in the world.
Andy comments: “I’m delighted to be joining Enfuce at such a pivotal time in its growth journey. It’s a thrill to join such a dynamic disruptor that’s not afraid to do things differently. I’m looking forward to bringing my experience of building diverse, high-performing teams to Enfuce, and securing deep and enduring relationships with Enfuce’s clients and other partners.”
Jessica Collingwood joins Enfuce as Chief People Officer (CPO). Jessica has over 25 years of experience working in M&A, change management and people management, across a variety of industry sectors from media, telco, ecommerce and fintech, including Virgin Group, where she was Group People Director. Jessica’s extensive expertise, gained from working internationally across large multinational organisations, smaller tech enabled growth businesses and as an external consultant, will be invaluable to Enfuce as it gears up for rapid growth over the next few years and looks to enhance its team and culture.
Jessica says: “I’m passionate about championing diversity and inclusion and in challenging the status quo, enabling businesses to be great at what they do without compromising what they stand for. Joining Enfuce is the easiest career choice I've ever made. I am hugely inspired by the founders, Co-CEOs and by the opportunities this business represents. I am surrounded by great talent and together we can make magic happen.”
Vanessa Schotes is Enfuce’s new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). As a leading global marketing expert, Vanessa draws on 19 years of driving high-impact communications and brand building in B2B enterprise environments, most recently at SaaS powerhouse and European process mining decacorn Celonis, where she defined the global strategy for demand generation, a core component of the company’s phenomenal growth trajectory. Prior to this, she led the global marketing efforts across 120 countries for the world’s largest flexible workspace provider, IWG Plc, owners of renowned workspace brands Regus and Spaces, and previously led the corporate and retail marketing efforts of currency exchange experts Moneycorp.
Vanessa comments: “Joining a company with such great potential, at an inflection point to hyper growth and aggressive international expansion, is every CMO’s dream come true. Enfuce have given me the perfect remit - to build awareness and a best-in-class demand generation engine to fuel the success of the business, and the green light to challenge traditional thinking and deliver transformative strategic impact. I’m looking forward to working with my hugely talented colleagues at Enfuce to engineer highly efficient and creative marketing functions, and make our bold vision for the business a reality.”
Fern Blackler is Enfuce’s new Chief Financial Officer (CFO). An EY trained ACA, Fern has spent the last 26 years in senior finance leadership roles, largely within the payments technology space, focusing on a variety of areas from remittances and cards to digital financial services. He has spent time at Worldremit, WEX, Visa and The London Stock Exchange.
Fern comments: “Since the day I met the co-founders and co-CEOs of Enfuce I have been itching to get involved. I am delighted to have the opportunity to work with such a dynamic and talented group and hope my experience of change and transformation can add significant value fast.”
Having already conquered the thriving Nordic fintech market, including partnerships with banking group OP, Swedish neobank Rocker and Danish expense management platform Pleo, Enfuce also recently launched in the UK, Europe’s most active fintech hotbed. As a formidable challenger to the current issuer processor status quo, with its cloud-native card issuing platform offering unmatched scalability and enhanced security as well as the potential to save money and time that companies would have spent on managing hardware infrastructure, Enfuce plans to accelerate its momentum through 2023 and beyond.
On the new hires, Monika Liikamaa, Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Enfuce, comments: “The appointment of our new executive team shows our clear ambition, tenacity and hunger to expand into new markets and serve more companies with the scalable, compliance-ready payment solutions they need to reach new customers. With their established expertise, strategic excellence and proven business success, I am confident that Andy, Jessica, Vanessa and Fern will help inspire and drive Enfuce’s vision to become the world’s number one cloud-based payments processor.”
Denise Johansson, Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Enfuce, says: “Enfuce does the heavy lifting of card issuing and processing, empowering businesses to focus on their core operations with the reassurance of a trusted compliant partner helping them in their quests to drive growth and customer loyalty. Our vision is clear - to educate every fintech, bank or brand, from challenger to goliath, to move to cloud-based embedded finance platforms by 2025 and drive the digital transformation of the UK and Europe for the benefit of businesses and consumers.”
Established in 2016 in Finland, and already the trusted number one issuer processor for more than 35 partners, Enfuce can launch CaaS for businesses in just eight weeks, an unrivalled onboarding timeframe compared to other providers that typically take up to six months to get partners up and running with embedded payments.
Key applications for Enfuce’s services include expense management, neobanks and fuel retailers, as well as providing corporate and consumer lending and customer loyalty programmes. To date, Enfuce has supported 16 million cardholders and processed more than €1 billion in transaction value annually.
Being the first financial service provider in the world to be PCI-DSS certified while running its service in the public cloud, Enfuce is a uniquely scalable payments processor that is lighting the way for the mobile revolution in payments. Its success at this year's FF Awards is a testament to Enfuce’s technology that supports debit, credit, prepaid, gift, fleet and fuel card programmes in any form - plastic, digital and/or tokenised - for consumer, commercial and B2B applications, along with digital wallets.