Dive Brief:

• Adyen’s president for the North America region, Davi Strazza, is leaving the Dutch payments processor after helping to “build one of the strongest infrastructures in global fintech,” he said Friday on social media outlets LinkedIn and X.
• ”After nearly 11 years at Adyen, I’ve decided it’s time to move on,” he said on the social media sites. Strazza didn’t specify his departure date from Adyen, or say where he plans to work next. He had been in the role for about three years.
• Gary Yang, the company’s senior vice president of global account management and partnerships, will take over from Strazza to lead the region, while the company seeks a successor, an Adyen spokesperson said Monday by email. That search process “is already underway,” the spokesperson said.

Dive Insight:

Adyen, a global business based in Amsterdam, has been investing heavily to expand in North America, particularly in the U.S., the largest market on the continent. 

When Strazza talked about the company’s North America strategy in June, he noted that the U.S. is where many of the company’s large clients are based. He said they included Cinemark Holdings, Patagonia, Etsy and eBay. The company has also previously named retailers Crate & Barrel and Dick’s Sporting Goods as customers.

But processor competition is fierce, with well-established rivals, including Fidelity National Information Services, also spearheading growth. For instance, FIS this year agreed to acquire merchant services company Worldpay in a $35-billion deal. Processor behemoth Fiserv has also been aggressive in seeking to build out its Clover brand. 

In addition, the processor market is teeming with fast-maturing start-ups, such as Shift4 Payments and Block’s Square, that are also battling to provide checkout services to restaurants, retailers and other merchants.

Adyen provides point-of-sale hardware as well as processing software services in-store as well as online. North America ranked as the company’s second-highest revenue-generating region last year, contributing 27% of the top line. Europe, the Middle East and Africa collectively accounted for 57%, according to Adyen’s 2024 annual report.

Strazza has been based in San Francisco, where Adyen had its biggest employee group, with about 300 workers as of June, followed by about 250 each in Chicago and New York, and 30 in Canada, he said.

Last year, the company moved to bigger offices in both San Francisco and Chicago to accommodate its teams. “This continued expansion, alongside focused hiring efforts in the region, is a sign of our ongoing commitment to winning in North America, underscoring our long-term ambitions in this market,” Adyen said in the annual report.

Strazza succeeded Brian Dammeir in the North America post as of January 2023, after being president of the Latin America region in Sao Paulo and head of U.S. enterprise sales, among other roles.

The departing executive noted the company’s growth during the decade-plus that he’s been at Adyen, citing an increase in headcount from about 200 to 4,500 employees; a jump in annual processed volume to $1.3 trillion, from $30 billion; and a surge to $2 billion in annual net revenue, from $100 million.