Payments companies MoneyGram International and Adyen announced top technology hires this week, underscoring the importance of digitization as the industry continues to evolve at a rapid pace.
Cross-border money transfer provider MoneyGram commissioned Josh Gordon-Blake, Chief Digital Officer, said in a Press release from Monday that he will drive the Dallas-based company’s digital strategy, including the global expansion of its mobile app and online services.
The Dutch digital payment processor Adyen said in a press release on Monday Tom Adams has been appointed as the new Chief Technology Officer. He succeeds Alexander Matthey, who plans to leave the company this year.
Both new hires will report to the CEOs of their respective companies, underscoring the importance of these executives’ roles to the companies. While many companies have undergone an IT transformation process in recent years, this is especially true in the payments space, where digital currencies and electronic money transfer are undergoing significant change due to new technologies, new government policies and massive private innovation.
Adams joins Adyen from digital payments pioneer Block, the parent company of point-of-sale processor Square and smartphone service Cash App. According to his LinkedIn profile, he led development at Cash App for four years and was with the company for nearly seven years.
“As we look at the opportunities ahead, we are in a key position to solve the ongoing complexity we see in the payments landscape,” Adyen co-CEO Pieter van der Does said in the Amsterdam-based company’s press release.
Although the two companies are of different ages and serve different payment segments, their pursuit of the latest technical know-how shows the current fierce competition in the industry. MoneyGram leads its History back 80 yearsbut the field is full of fintech newcomers like Adyen, which founded in 2006The old guard and the new market entrants are racing to see which technology they can use to their advantage.
Real-time payments, for example, are speeding up transactions around the world. So far, the U.S. has lagged behind some parts of the world in adopting real-time payments, but the launch of FedNow, the Federal Reserve’s instant payments system, last year will ultimately make the technology more accessible than it is today.
“Part of it is still time and education and awareness,” Rocio Wu, a principal at Cambridge, Massachusetts-based venture capital firm F-Prime, said in an interview last week about the introduction of faster payments. “I believe that the world will eventually agree on real-time payments.”
Gordon-Blake has an entrepreneurial background and co-founded digital money transfer company Pangea, where he previously served as Chief Operating Officer. Pangea was Sold to Enova International in 2021 for an undisclosed amount. His area of responsibility at MoneyGram includes Remittances, cryptocurrency integration and new products, according to an email from a company spokesperson.
He replaces Seth Ross, a MoneyGram spokesman said. Ross left MoneyGram last month, according to his LinkedIn profile.
