BaaS fintech Vodeno overhauls leadership with new CEO and chairman
Vodeno, a European Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) provider, has overhauled its leadership with the appointment of Philip McHugh as chairman and Noah Sharp as CEO.
Vodeno in leadership shake-up
McHugh is the former CEO of payments solutions provider Paysafe. Prior to his three-year stint there, he was the senior executive vice president and president of TSYS Merchant Solutions for two years.
McHugh also spent two decades working for two banking heavyweights, most recently as CEO of Barclaycard Business Solutions and a further ten years at Citigroup, where he held several senior management roles within the credit card division.
Sharp joins Vodeno from BCB Group, a UK-based crypto payments firm, where he served as deputy CEO for just over a year.
Prior to this, he was chief banking officer of Paysafe for two and a half years, responsible for global financial partnerships and operations across international, digital banking, card acquiring, e-money wallets and embedded finance.
Sharp also held several senior roles within global banks during his extensive career, including Standard Chartered Bank, where he was responsible for building and advising the bank’s fintech client franchise in Europe and North America. Prior to this, Sharp worked at Deutsche Bank for 11 years across several continents, where he most recently led global relationships for European and US headquartered fintechs and other non-bank financial institutions.
Sharp replaces Helen Smith, a seasoned advisor and non-exec director, who has been interim CEO of Vodeno since the start of the year (she is also a non-executive director of NatWest Boxed).
The company’s previous CEO and founder, Wojciech Sobieraj, joined Vodeno’s board.
Vodeno says it has 30 BaaS projects under its belt (either already delivered or currently in development), including a joint venture with UK banking group NatWest. Called NatWest Boxed, the venture offers BaaS services to businesses in the UK.
Backed by global private equity firm Warburg Pincus, the fintech has recently attracted new investors – the aforementioned NatWest, which has committed €58 million as part of the joint venture deal, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which has promised an equity investment of up to €50 million.
