Fouzi Husaini, a veteran of Amazon and Capital One, will play a key role in Marqeta’s efforts to scale its AI organization, the company announced Monday (Sept. 23).

“We’re thrilled to have Fouzi on board,” Marqeta Chief Product and Technology Officer Randy Kern said in a news release.

“His deep knowledge of AI and machine learning, combined with decades of on-the-ground AI leadership at top companies, will be instrumental in shaping our technology roadmap and leveraging AI to expand our capabilities in transaction intelligence, fraud prevention, and customer service.”

Husaini joins Marqeta from Capital One, where he served as vice president of machine learning (ML) engineering, focused on developing ML models for the company’s credit products/services. Before that, he oversaw a technical team at Amazon that created AI/ML customer-facing experiences for Alexa users.

Marqeta introduced its first external-facing generative AI tool last summer. Marqeta Docs AI, powered by OpenAI’s large language models (LLMs) lets Marqeta customers ask questions, find answers to individual use cases and more quickly understand products.

In other AI news, PYMNTS wrote last week about the way the technology is easing the administrative burden on small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), giving them more space to focus on growth and strategy.

“AI can help integrate data from across spreadsheets, PDFs and business units, unlocking insights that can improve operations and progress toward business goals,” IBM Head of Sustainability Software Christina Shim said in an interview with PYMNTS.

And recent research by PYMNTS Intelligence found that 96% of SMBs that have employed AI tools — though not necessarily GenAI — saw it as an effective way to streamline tasks.

Among the most impactful areas of AI adoption is the automation of administrative tasks. For example, AI-powered tools such as chatbots, virtual assistants and automated scheduling software can handle customer inquiries, appointment bookings and routine communications, giving human workers more time to manage more strategic tasks.

“Separately, AI tools that leverage natural language processing (NLP) can assist in drafting emails, documents and reports, reducing the need for manual input and allowing businesses to operate more efficiently,” PYMNTS wrote.

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Masrani has been CEO for more than a decade and has been with the bank for 38 years, TD Bank said in a Thursday (Sept. 19) press release.

Following his retirement as CEO, Masrani will serve as an advisor to the bank until Oct. 31, 2025, according to the release.

“Bharat helped to build TD over almost four decades, and as CEO led the Bank through a period of profound change in our industry,” Alan MacGibbon, chair of the TD Bank Group board of directors, said in the release. “He accelerated our transformation in the digital age, enhanced the competitiveness of our businesses, nurtured one of the world’s most valuable brands, and steered TD through complexity with a steady hand.”

Chun will be appointed to the board of directors and become chief operating officer, TD Bank Group, reporting to Masrani, effective Nov. 1, and will become Group president and CEO, TD Bank Group, when Masrani retires April 10, per the release.

Since joining TD in 1992, Chun has assumed increasingly senior roles and improved the performance and strength of the businesses he led, according to the release.

“Ray is a dynamic leader with a long track record of success across multiple leadership roles,” MacGibbon said in the release. “His proven ability to drive change, deliver outcomes and build strong, high-performing teams will serve him well as he guides TD into the future.”

TD Bank Group also announced Thursday that Riaz Ahmed, group head, wholesale banking and president and CEO of TD Securities, will retire at the end of January after close to three decades at the bank.

The bank also announced three changes to the senior executive team. Effective Nov. 1, Paul Clark, executive vice president, private wealth management and financial planning, will become senior executive vice president, wealth management; Sona Mehta, executive vice president, real estate secured lending, everyday banking, saving and investing, will become group head, Canadian personal banking; and Tim Wiggan, group head, wealth management and insurance, will become group head, wholesale banking and president and CEO of TD Securities, per the release.

“We have a strong bench of senior leaders and will execute a smooth and seamless CEO transition,” Masrani said in the release. “The anti-money laundering challenges we face took place on my watch as CEO and I take full responsibility. In the coming months, I will continue to advance and direct the critical remediation program required to meet our obligations and responsibilities and strengthen our risk and control foundation.”

It was reported Aug. 28 that TD Bank’s ongoing issues with its anti-money laundering (AML) controls could usher in a leadership change.

That report from Reuters came days after the bank released quarterly earnings that showed a $2.6 billion provision related to a possible investigation into the AML program. This came after a $450 million provision announced during the prior quarter.

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Lee, who spent more than 25 years with the food and beverage giant, will join Target’s leadership team Sept. 22, the retailer announced Thursday (Sept. 19).

“As a successful leader in finance and strategy, Jim will oversee the central role our finance team plays in fueling our long-term profitable growth,” Target Chair and CEO Brian Cornell said in a news release.

“With decades leading core finance functions and nurturing growth, Jim will complement the strong and tenured leadership currently in place on our finance team.”

Lee’s most recent role was as PepsiCo’s deputy finance chief, leading the finance teams for the company’s $35 billion international business. He has also led financial planning and analysis, and finance functions for brand and innovation, franchise bottlers, supply chain and business development, the release added.

“I’m excited to join a team and a brand that I have so much respect for, and I’m eager to get immersed in the retail industry,” said Lee. “With a clear strategy, a differentiated shopping experience and a brand that consumers love, Target’s competitive advantages are a strong foundation for long-term growth.”

Lee succeeds Michael Fiddelke, who had been serving as both chief operating officer and CFO at Target since earlier this year.

PYMNTS has been examining the changing role of the CFO, with finance leaders saying the job of the chief financial officer role has never been more strategic.

“The CFO role has evolved from being a historian, looking at and delivering reports that are dated, to becoming a strategic partner in decision-making and not just documenting that decision-making,” Brian Unruh, CFO at global artificial intelligence (AI) company ABBYY, said in an interview for the PYMNTS “A Day In The Life of a CFO” series.

This evolution, the report noted, has been fueled by developments in technology, evolving market dynamics, and a rising need for sustainable growth.

“The finance department exists to fuel decision frameworks,” said Unruh, pointing out that the “timely, accurate, and multidimensional data” finance department provides each day to the rest of their business is what helps define and accelerate internal growth drivers.

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In this role, Belsky will work to bring the artificial intelligence (AI) startup’s products to more schools; boost its engagement with teachers and students; and work with OpenAI’s own teams on their partnerships with the academic community, Bloomberg reported Wednesday (Sept. 18).

These efforts will span elementary schools, higher education and continuing education, according to the report.

“Leah will accelerate our work with leading academic institutions to ensure that people working across all disciplines and industries have the training they need to maximize the benefits of AI,” OpenAI Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap said in the report.

Reached by PYMNTS, OpenAI confirmed the report.

The company launched a version of ChatGPT built for universities in May, saying ChatGPT Edu allows the schools to responsibly deploy AI to students, faculty, researchers and campus operations. The product can help with tasks like tutoring, reviewing resumes, writing grant applications and grading.

This is one of three business products that OpenAI rolled out since August. A year after the launch of the first product, these offerings collectively have more than 1 million paying business users.

When announcing ChatGPT Edu in a May 30 blog post, OpenAI wrote: “Powered by GPT-4o, ChatGPT Edu can reason across text and vision and use advanced tools such as data analysis. This new offering includes enterprise-level security and controls and is affordable for educational institutions.”

As AI matures and use cases continue to develop, the technology is impacting higher education operations from the dean’s office to the financial aid office, PYMNTS reported in January.

In July, one of OpenAI’s founding members said he is launching an “AI native” school called Eureka that will meld education and AI.

Andrej Karpathy, who had been a key researcher for the company until February, wrote in a post on X that subject matter experts “cannot personally tutor all 8 billion of us on demand.”

“However, with recent progress in generative AI, this learning experience feels tractable,” Karpathy wrote. “The teacher still designs the course materials, but they are supported, leveraged and scaled with an AI Teaching Assistant who is optimized to help guide the students through them.”

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Herrero, a veteran of companies such as Meta, Square and BNP Paribas, is replacing Romain Mazeries, who is stepping down as chief executive, the Paris-based company announced Tuesday (Sept. 17).

“Sergi brings a wealth of experience and vision that aligns perfectly with our ambitions for Mangopay,” Xavier Garambois, chairman of the Mangopay board, said in a news release. “Mangopay is on an exciting growth trajectory and we are confident that Sergi is the right leader to take the business to its next stage of development.”

Before this latest role, Herrero served as global director for payments and commerce partnerships at Meta, launching and expanding its payment and commerce capabilities. He also held senior executive positions at Square and BNP Paribas, and served as co-CEO of the telecommunications company VEON.

“Mangopay provides transformational payment solutions for platforms internationally. Our offering for this expanding area of the ecommerce industry is both innovative and highly differentiated,” Herrero said.

Mazeries, who was part of Mangopay’s founding team and served as CEO for the last six years, will remain a part of the board of directors and “will continue to work closely with the company,” the release said.

PYMNTS spoke earlier this year with James Butland, U.K. managing director at Mangopay, about the “digital renaissance” underway in B2B payments, as companies work to modernize their antiquated processes.

“Businesses are becoming much more aware and much more savvy about how to operate digitally,” Butland said, explaining that dealing with B2B payments offline comes with “a lot of admin, a lot of costs and time lost.”

More recently, Mangopay Vice President of Product and Data Maciej Pitucha contributed his thoughts on fraud prevention to the PYMNTS eBook, “The Implications of Uncertainty.”

“The most effective way to safeguard against these risks is to monitor current baseline metrics and look out for spikes and anomalies — things like how many new users there are, transaction volume and payment methods used in a specific region or during a specific period,” wrote Pitucha. “These anomalies are yellow flags that prompt us to take a closer look.”

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The company also said in the Friday (Sept. 13) press release announcing this leadership change that Worldline experienced “slow trading conditions coupled with specific performance issues” in some parts of its business over the summer. Worldline added that it has implemented action plans in response to these issues and will announce further details during its Oct. 30 announcement of third-quarter results.

Worldline’s profit warning issued Friday is the third it has released this year, Reuters reported Friday. The announcement sent its shares to a record low that marked a 92% drop from their July 2021 high.

During the search for a new CEO, Marc-Henri Desportes, Worldline’s deputy CEO and head of merchant services, will serve as CEO for an interim period, according to the release.

Worldline also reiterated its focus on executing its plan called Power24, which aims to transform the company to be more client-centric, innovative, efficient, and positioned for stronger future growth and margin improvement, per the release.

“Power24 and all our current major development initiatives will be pursued under the steer of Marc-Henri Desportes, whilst the next strategic plan of Worldline will be actively prepared to leverage all our remarkable assets for long-term development and strong value creation for all stakeholders,” Wilfried Verstraete, chairman of Worldline’s board of directors, said in the release.

Verstraete said in the release that under Desportes’ leadership, the company built “a full pan-European footprint, a vast customer base” and strategic partnerships with leading financial institutions.

Grapinet said in the release: “As Worldline enters a new phase, I am fully confident that Marc-Henri Desportes will pursue to successfully execute Power24 to adapt to the current challenges. By leveraging all its assets and talents, I am convinced that Worldline has a very solid future ahead.”

Worldline said in February that it planned to cut 8% of its workforce to reduce costs and “support stronger future growth and cash generation.”

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Patrick succeeds Greg Worch, who retired, the company said in a Wednesday (Sept. 11) press release.

In his new role, Patrick will lead the company’s growth and expansion in the commercial aviation, hospitality and overall travel industries, where demand for payment orchestration solutions like those offered by CellPoint Digital is surging, according to the release.

“As chief revenue officer, Mark oversees CellPoint Digital’s revenue strategy and global business development teams as well as the development of a new account management function,” CellPoint Digital CEO Kristian Gjerding said in the release. “This comes amidst growing demand from businesses seeking to streamline their digital payment capabilities while countering the major challenges they face with existing providers to deliver a seamless service.”

Before joining CellPoint Digital in 2019, Patrick served as chief operating officer at FinTech startup Intrapay, CEO at mobile commerce firm GoSwiff (now PaySwiff), and general manager and regional head of the Ingenico (formerly Global Connect) ePayments business in the Asia-Pacific region, per the release.

“It has been a career highlight to be a part of CellPoint Digital’s growth story and to stand at the forefront of optimizing customers’ path to purchase across digital channels,” Patrick said in the release. “This business-critical issue will only grow in importance as consumers increasingly opt for alternative payment methods and demand friction-free payment experiences.”

The embedded finance opportunity rests at the intersection of increasing digitization and the corresponding behavioral expectations of end users, PYMNTS reported in December.

“There is a lot of success in the SMB market using [embedded finance] to satisfy their customers and present this as an innovation,” Tom Randklev, global head of product at CellPoint Digital, told PYMNTS at the time in an interview. “The whole ecosystem is inherently managed, which creates efficiencies and a delightful customer experience.”

In January, CellPoint Digital and Virgin Atlantic formed a partnership to make transactions for travelers on the British air carrier seamless and more secure.

The companies said CellPoint Digital’s payment orchestration capabilities would provide Virgin Atlantic with reduced transaction costs, greater control over payment processes and acquirer relationships, and centralized management of its entire payment ecosystem.

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The layoffs, its first in 15 years, will be accompanied by a restructuring of PwC’s technology group amid slowing demand for its advisory services, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday (Sept. 11), citing sources familiar with the matter.

Those sources say PwC — one of the “Big Four” accounting operations — is in the process of cutting staff in the U.S. and elsewhere, chiefly in its U.S. advisory and products and technology operations. The cuts, about half of which are offshore, include associates as well as managing directors. It also includes business services, audit and tax divisions, the sources said.

PwC intends to notify those affected, roughly 2.5% of the workforce at the U.S. unit, in October, the sources added. A staff memo obtained by the WSJ outlined the layoff/restructuring plans.

“There will be an element of resource action that will impact a relatively small proportion of our people, something that is never easy,” Paul Griggs, PwC’s U.S. leader, said in the memo, adding that the company hopes to restructure its products and technology teams to embed them in individual business lines and streamline processes in business services.

When reached for comment by PYMNTS, PwC U.S. Chief Operating Officer Tim Grady said the move was necessary.

“To remain competitive and position our business for the future, we are continuing to transform areas of our firm and are aligning our workforce to better support our strategy, including attracting and moving the right talent and skill sets to the areas where we need them most,” Grady said in an emailed statement. “Right now, we are focused on running our business well and adapting to meet the needs of our clients and the rapidly changing market.”

The WSJ noted that PwC has positioned itself as an outlier among the Big Four over the past two years by not cutting its U.S. workforce. The other three firms – EY, KPMG and Deloitte – let go of thousands of U.S. workers during that period.

The layoffs come as PwC is facing other pressures. For example, the U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) earlier this week issued new quality control standards for accounting firms.

Those standards were approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in a 3-2 vote, in the face of objections from the likes of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and firms including EY and PwC.

The standards require accounting firms that audit more than 100 public companies to set up an oversight board that includes at least one independent outsider to help oversee audit quality.

“An auditing firm is ultimately a professional services firm, and it needs to ensure the quality of the services it provides,” said SEC Chair Gary Gensler. “I am pleased to approve this standard because it will improve the quality control systems of auditors, and thus better protect investors.”

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Bowman will oversee the payments and financial services business of the financial operations platform for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and will report directly to BILL CEO and Founder René Lacerte, the company said in a Monday (Sept. 9) press release.

“The market opportunity we are pursuing is immense, and there couldn’t be a better time to bring the kind of deep leadership expertise Mary Kay has in payments and financial services,” Lacerte said in the release. “We’re driving an ambitious innovation agenda to enrich existing payment options, deliver new payment options for our SMB and accountant customers, and capitalize on our potential as the essential financial operations platform for SMBs.”

Bowman was most recently head of global buyer, seller and platform product and solutions at Visa, according to the release. In that role, she led the strategy for acceptance products and solutions.

Before that, Bowman oversaw the engineering, product and operations teams at Square; oversaw global payment acceptance, issuance and gift card programs at Amazon; and led global payments for Digital River, per the release.

“I’ve dedicated my career to bringing great technology solutions to SMBs,” Bowman said in the release. “Innovation starts with customers, and I’m passionate about creating value for SMBs by delivering industry-leading payments capabilities for them and their trusted accounting advisors and banking partners.”

BILL has been expanding and refining its financial operations platform to meet the needs of SMBs, Lacerte said in August during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

During the past fiscal year, the company launched its integrated platform that incorporates its accounts payable (AP) and spend and expense management solutions; added a data and analytics layer to the platform to give businesses a comprehensive view of their cash flow; and leveraged artificial intelligence throughout the platform to simplify and personalize the user experience it provides, Lacerte said during the call.

“We turn the financial back-office complexity that drains SMBs of time and money into simple automated tools that provide visibility and control,” Lacerte said. “We empower SMBs to run better businesses.”

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In his new role, Koker will refine TerraPay’s product strategy, spearhead its go-to-market initiatives, and help the company scale its service offerings and strengthen its client relationships on a global scale, the company said in a Tuesday (Sept. 3) press release.

“His strategic insights and deep-rooted experience in product innovation will prove to be vital as we continue to elevate our offerings and deliver unparalleled value to our customers,” Ani Sane, co-founder and chief business officer at TerraPay, said in the release.

Koker was most recently a member of the global money movement team at Visa, a company he joined in 2011. In that role, he focused on defining strategic growth initiatives and enhancing customer services.

Before joining Visa, Koker was with FIS, where he held pivotal roles in Manila, Hong Kong and Bangkok, per the release.

“I am honored to join TerraPay during this transformative phase,” Koker said in the release. “The opportunity to contribute to TerraPay’s mission of digitizing global money movement resonates deeply with me, and I look forward to driving innovation and growth alongside this talented team.”

Koker joins TerraPay at a time when the company has been enhancing its capabilities and expanding its market.

On Aug. 20, the company said it teamed up with five digital wallet operators to facilitate cross-border payments and money movement. The five wallet operators participating in the new Wallet Interoperability Council — Airtel, bKash, MPESA, Nequi and Sama Money — will use TerraPay’s technology to facilitate the expansion of their wallets from local payment solutions to global ones.

In July, TerraPay partnered with Swift to enable financial institutions to send money to mobile wallets via the Swift system. This arrangement applies to 2.1 billion mobile wallets worldwide and is designed to enhance the cross-border payments experience for both businesses and consumers.

The first half of 2024 has been marked by technological advancements and strategic initiatives aimed at reducing transaction costs as a key way to spur greater interoperability and financial inclusion, TerraPay Chief Operating Officer Ram Sundaram told PYMNTS in an interview posted in July.

“There are two ways you can increase revenue: either by charging a customer more or by reducing your costs,” Sundaram said. “And the use of technology in reducing costs is something that is easier to do than trying to charge the customer more.”

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