By Anna Irrera
(Reuters) – Melio, a New York-based startup that offers payment tools for small businesses, has hired Prashant Gandhi, a JPMorgan Chase & Co managing director and Chase’s former head of digital payments, the company said.
As chief business officer, Gandhi will be in charge of increasing the startup’s business with financial institutions and software companies, Melio said.
At JPMorgan, Gandhi helped to build a team that managed digital payment products used by the bank’s retail and small business customers.
Prior to joining the U.S.’s largest bank, Gandhi spent 16 years at McKinsey & Co, where he was a partner and helped to launch a new practice called McKinsey Digital as the global chief operating officer.
The move comes amid a global boom in digital payments volumes, driven by coronavirus lockdowns which has pushed more business online and increased demand for digital payments software.
Founded in 2018, Melio has raised $256 million since its inception from investors, including Coatue, Accel and General Catalyst.
It provides a free online payment platform that it says helps small businesses and their suppliers to receive and transfer payments faster and more easily.
The company is on track to process tens of billions of dollars of transactions in 2021, it said.
(Reporting by Anna Irrera. Editing by Jane Merriman)
