Fintech Payments Startup Highnote Hits $750 Million-Plus Valuation
Summary
Its a strategy Highnote CEO John Macllwaine says he had planned to follow since founding the company four years ago.efore starting Highnote, MacIlwaine, 55, spent 25 years working at financial services and fintech companies, including as an executive at Visa, chief information officer at prepaid card issuer Greendot and chief technology officer of LendingClub. Being able to see how global commerce was occurring and the transactions and volume and scale really gave me an appreciation for just how impactful payments are, MacIlwaine says.In 2020, he left a role as general manager of Braintree, the Paypal-owned payments processing firm that competes closely with Stripe and Adyen. Right now, their choices are to partner with multiple vendors and really pay double the costs and not get a lot of the benefits from having a unified platform. Another competitor is Lithic, a ten-year-old New York company specializing in payment processing and card issuing. In its recent earnings call, Marqeta said it struggled with delays and a surplus of accounts formed after regulation reworked how it onboards banks.Macllwaine says hes not concerned.