Toronto-headquartered FinTech startup Brim Financial has appointed Arthur Zhao as its chief financial officer (CFO).
Zhao joins Brim with over 20 years of experience in the FinTech industry. Most recently, he served as the vice president of finance and revenue operations at California startup Marqeta. There, he led multiple rounds of capital raise and helped the company to make its market debut on Nasdaq in June last year. Marqeta priced its initial public offering at $27 per share, valuing the company at around $15 billion.
At Marqeta, Zhao built the finance function team from a headcount of two to over 30 people.
Prior to joining Marqeta, Zhao worked with PayPal in various leadership roles. He first joined PayPal in 2008 as senior manager of North American Finance. Zhao then became the head of finance and analytics at Braintree when it was acquired by PayPal for $800 million in 2013.
Zhao was also a senior financial analyst at HSBC Card Services and Supertex (acquired by Microchip Technology in 2014).
According to Brim, Zhao’s addition is part of the expansion of its executive team in order to support market demand for the company’s solutions. Brim did not expand on its identified market demand.
Co-founded in 2017 by Rasha Katabi and Marcius Bansavatar, Brim’s product suite includes credit cards, an end-to-end digital platform, and an embedded loyalty and rewards program. The FinTech firm’s backers include Desjardins Group, EPIC Ventures, Goeasy, White Owl, and Impression Ventures.
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In March last year, Brim raised $25 million CAD in Series B funding, just a month before it also partnered with Canadian Western Bank (CWB) to provide CWB clients access to Brim’s suite of consumer credit cards and integrated digital banking platform.
Bansavatar left his position as chief product officer from Brim in 2018, fully departing from the company as co-founder last year to start working on Savvii Group Inc for which he recently raised $10 million in seed funding.
Featured image from Brim Financial’s LinkedIn post.