AvidXchange Promotes Ex-Fiserv Exec Dan Drees to President

Accounts payable (AP) automation and payments solution company AvidXchange has a new president.

Dan Drees, who has served as the Charlotte, North Carolina, company’s chief growth officer since 2018, will now oversee the company’s sales, marketing, operations and product as president, AvidXchange announced in a news release Tuesday (Jan. 31).

“Since joining, Drees has been key to AvidXchange’s growth and helping the company navigate critical milestones, such as organic vertical market expansions, multiple acquisitions, the IPO and the company’s response to COVID-19,” the release stated.

The company also announced the hiring of James Sutton as chief revenue officer. He comes to AvidXchange following tenures in senior sales and revenue roles at companies that include Google, Salesforce and — mostly recently — Gusto, according to the release.

Among the company’s other recent milestones include its debut of an invoice-to-pay application programming interface (API) integration with Intuit QuickBooks Online last month.

Also last month, AvidXchange announced it had expanded its international payment capabilities via a partnership with Wise Platform.

“Partnering with Wise to provide our customers with best-in-class international payment capabilities was an easy decision because of their market-leading platform and seamless integration capabilities,” Drees said at the time. “Together, we stand firm as leaders and remain dedicated to making our customers’ payment process more efficient regardless of country lines.”

PYMNTS research has shown that attempts to modernize and quicken the B2B cross-border payment experience have lagged similar efforts to improve the online payment experience for consumers, adding up to a cross-border payments process that is often needlessly complex and filled with friction.

Small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are especially hard hit, with 27% ranking the complexity of making cross-border payments as one of their chief obstacles, according to the “B2B Cross-Border Payments Tracker,” a collaboration between PYMNTS and American Express.

Meanwhile, 98% of online merchants project their AP volumes will increase over the next three years.

But that rate of growth could be threatened, as 82% of online marketplaces said their business’s expansion would be at least somewhat or slightly hindered if they could not manage their forecasted growth in AP volume.

According to 54% of the companies surveyed, automation is key to handling this explosive volume growth, which has served as a root cause of poor vendor communication as online marketplaces with legacy or non-modernized AP systems struggle to deal with their growth.

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