Mark Lenhard, a PayPal veteran, is joining the board of Modo, bringing the experience of an operator, an advisor, and an investor, having completed work across the full stack of financial services. He told PYMNTS that he has “deep expertise” in payments on both the issuing and acquiring sides.
Lenhard worked at PayPal for four years, where he ran global strategy as well as business development for payments Chase, so he dedicated time on the acquiring side at Chase Paymentech but also on the issuing side by working with the cards group and on the Chase Sapphire team. More recently, Lenhard was part of the management team that spun Magento out of eBay, grew the business, and ultimately sold it to Adobe.
In describing Modo, Lenhard thinks that Bruce Parker, Modo’s founder and CEO, coined the phrase “payment geek.” He says that describes the company well as it speaks to the unique value proposition it has in the market and how the firm is — in the nicest of ways — true payment geeks.
Lenhard notes the FinTech has a “deep understanding” and expertise — it understands the “pain points” and the right way to solve them. He says there are many players aiming to solve these problems, but very few are able to do that for global enterprises the way Modo is. And he notes that Modo is, in a way, building “the future of payments technology” in much the same way that firms such as AWS have changed the operation of apps and the storage of data.
Lenhard said Modo is applying that same thought, philosophy, and expertise to how one thinks about and make changes to the payment stack end-to-end. That allows, in a way, every enterprise to get “best in class” payment execution without the massive teams and capital expense, he said.
He pointed out that many organizations are working with small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) on how they institutionalize their payment stack or start leveraging payments in a different way. But he notes that Modo focuses on a slightly different area and is bringing its unique expertise to help the biggest of the big companies, the Global 2000. And he thinks that they’ve found an underserved market.
For his part, Parker said Global 2000s, enterprises, and global brands is a “little bit rarefied air,” but he notes that the FinTech has been fortunate to attract several of those kinds of companies to be its partners and customers early on in its journey. However, he said, there is a lot more to learn and to do.
Parker said Lenhard knows the playbook and “he’s been very successful in exactly this space for quite some time.” And as Lenhard joins the board, Parker said, the company looks forward to benefiting from his wisdom.