Plaid hires Booking.com exec as first head of Europe

Plaid has appointed Ripsy Bandourian as its first head of Europe after a period of significant growth for the company across the continent. 

Bandourian will lead the business strategy and operations for Plaid’s European arm out of Amsterdam as the company continues to grow.

After eight years at Booking.com, most recently as VP global accommodation partner services, as well as experience at Apple, McKinsey and Goldman Sachs, she brings a wealth of technology and operations knowledge with her to Plaid.

In a LinkedIn post announcing her new role, Bandourian said that Plaid’s mission to “unlock financial freedom for everyone” is a personal one for her.

“As someone who has spent big chunks of my life moving, I deeply feel the pain of not being able to take my financial history with me,” she said. 

She talked about the friction in managing and moving money, and the ways in which Plaid network and solutions enable innovators to address these issues, noting that the pandemic has really accelerated fintech adoption.

The open finance data network has doubled the number of payments completed on its platform and grown its headcount by 30 per cent in the first quarter of 2022, recently adding open banking in Italy, Ireland and the Netherlands.

Bandourian also explained that the past two years have created “intense shifts” in how people in Europe interact with their money.

“Now, nearly every company with online customers is figuring out how to embed a digital financial service into its product,” she said. 

“Having spent most of the last decade working with platforms and marketplaces, I aim to help Plaid harness this huge opportunity for growth and help companies across the region make sense of open banking and how they can leverage it to drive [the] adoption of products and services, as consumers increasingly turn to digital financial tools.” 

More than a third of people are now making mobile payments where they would have used a physical card before, according to Plaid, demonstrating the need for companies to integrate fintech into their customer experience.

“As more companies outside of financial services turn to fintech to create new products that better fit their customer needs, Plaid plays a key role in helping them understand what local customers across different markets want and how fintech can play a role in better serving them,” Plaid COO Eric Sager said.

“Ripsy’s background in new market expansion, partnerships and improving customer experience will help drive Plaid’s continued growth across Europe.”