Dive Brief:
- Embedded payments player NMI, which processes $440 billion annually, has appointed former Billtrust President Steven Pinado as its next CEO, effective Sept. 2, according to a Tuesday NMI press release.
- Pinado most recently has been a partner at New York venture capital firm Radian Capital, where he worked with the firm’s software company investments. He replaces Vijay Sondhi, who has been in NMI’s top post for seven years. Sondhi will remain as an advisor through the end of the year, the release said.
- NMI board chairman Peter Christodoulo, a partner at NMI investor Francisco Partners, said Pinado’s “strategic mindset and deep expertise across payments and software make him the right person to lead NMI into its next phase.”
Dive Insight:
While the NMI release said Pinado would take the CEO post next month, his LinkedIn profile already had him in the role this month. His profile also showed he has served on the boards of several software companies that provide services, such as payments processing, to merchants. They included Browzwear, Helcim and Emporia Holdings.
Schaumburg, Illinois-based NMI built a business on payments gateway services and has wooed financial institution clients with software aimed at helping banks compete with younger fintechs. Its mission has been to sell software to banks and other clients, which allows them to offer merchants payments tools that reduce friction for credit card transactions.
NMI now caters to about one million clients, processing 5.8 billion in transactions annually, up from 550 million transactions when Sondhi arrived in 2018, according to the release.
In an NMI blog post, Sondhi, a former Visa executive, said he made the decision to step down. He noted his track record included expanding NMI’s annual payments volume nearly tenfold and integrating five acquisitions. Those purchases included the 2023 acquisition of the commercial division of payments software firm Sphere, and the year before, NMI bought payments customer relationship software firm IRIS.
The privately held NMI has also attracted investments from the New York venture capital firm Insight Partners and Boston-based Great Hill Partners.
