Plaid Appoints Former Visa SVP Cecilia Frew as Head of Open Finance

Plaid has appointed payments and financial services executive Cecilia Frew as head of open finance.

“In this role, Cecilia is responsible for overseeing Plaid’s evolving and dynamic relationships with financial institutions as we move into a new era of digital finance,” Plaid said in an announcement emailed to PYMNTS on Friday (Aug. 25).

Frew joins the company from Equifax, where she was senior vice president and general manager of the Strategic Financial Services business, according to the announcement.

Before that, Frew was senior vice president and global head for Visa Direct, where she led the launch and commercialization of the product globally, the announcement said. At Visa, she also led the U.S. Prepaid Business.

Earlier, Frew was at PNC Bank as senior vice president of Debit & Prepaid Products and Customers Rewards, per the announcement.

“I’m excited to join this amazing company at this important time in the industry,” Frew said in a post on LinkedIn.

In her new role at Plaid, Frew will oversee the company’s engagement with financial institutions in the United States and Canada at a time when the industry is coming together to establish data connectivity standards and embrace digital finance, Plaid said in the announcement.

“As open finance becomes codified into law, the dynamics between open finance companies like Plaid and the financial institutions we engage with continue to come into fruition,” the company said. “Today, about 1 in 3 people with a U.S. bank account have used Plaid, and many banks recognize the imperative of building and delivering digital financial services that meet their customers where they are.”

In one recently announced development, Cross River Bank expanded its partnership with Plaid in July to offer customers real-time payments.

Cross River Bank will power Plaid’s real-time offerings in this expanded partnership, which follows the April debut of their first real-time product, Instant Payouts on Plaid Transfer.

“By combining the strengths of our proprietary banking core and advanced API [application programming interface] technology with Plaid’s expertise in financial technology tools, millions of Plaid customers will have access to their money when and where they need it,” Adam Goller, head of FinTech banking at Cross River, said at the time.