Israeli startup Melio, which offers payment tools for small businesses, has named ex-Meta and PayPal senior exec Tomer Barel as its chief operating officer, Reuters reported Monday (Feb. 28).
Barel’s responsibility will be to lead Melio’s strategy execution, scaling operations with the firm’s quick growth.
Melio’s payments processing volume has risen lately, a result of the boom in digital payments in the wake of the pandemic.
Reuters writes that Melio in September 2021 raised $250 million in a late-stage funding round. That had the effect of tripling its valuation to $4 billion since the beginning of 2021.
In July, Melio hired Prashant Gandhi, a JPMorgan Chase managing director and also Chase’s former head of digital payments.
Read more: Melio: 2021 Was the Year of Entrepreneurs
Gandhi wrote for PYMNTS in January about the year 2021 and the effects it had on business.
He wrote how in the “Great Resignation” people often quit their jobs to work for themselves. These entrepreneurs now need help managing business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) payments processes.
Gandhi wrote that the pandemic gave entrepreneurs “a choice of fight or flight.”
“Knowing they had to innovate to succeed, entrepreneurs increasingly turned to digital services to help start, run and grow their businesses,” he said. “Many embraced eCommerce to remain operational, and consumers favored electronic and contactless payments over cash.”
Business owners began looking into ways to manage cash flow, using smart payables and receivables management and choosing systems with the most payment options.
Cutting down on bookkeeping through automated reconciliation was also a move.
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