Company
eWise was founded in 2000 with the goal of bringing together all of a person’s financial accounts onto a single screen. Since then, we have been pioneering and partnering with financial institutions around the world to make them the one place for their customers to access and manage their full financial lives.
Our eWise Money Manager suite is a fully featured account aggregation and personal financial management solution for financial institutions. More recently, we have launched a payments product line to help merchants grow their profits by shrinking payment costs.
Our first payments product was Secure Vault Payments launched in partnership with NACHA (the Electronic Payments Association) in 2010.
In 2012, we launched PayWithMyBank as the low-cost online payment alternative to PayPal & credit cards, available to 100% of U.S. consumers with a bank account. PayWithMyBank allows consumers to buy products, pay bills or make donations on a merchant’s, biller’s or nonprofit’s website directly from their bank account.
Management Team
Alexandre Gonthier - CEO
Alex is from Switzerland, so it will come as no surprise that he isn’t a stranger to payments. Since 1997, he has been a founder and entrepreneur, building several successful payments companies. Alex was CEO and co-founder of iPIN (acquired by Aepona), a leading online and mobile payment platform for the likes of Visa, Wells Fargo and AT&T. iPIN was featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist and other leading publications. He was also the CTO of mobile payments company Paymo, which merged with BOKU, the fastest-growing mobile payments company worldwide fueling customers like Facebook, EA, and Sony. As CEO of Trinity Mobile and Director of Ticketscript (a leading ticketing platform in Europe and post-merger successor to Trinity Mobile), he learned firsthand about payments from the merchant’s perspective. Alex was previously an Advisor to private equity firm 3i and a Venture Partner at venture capital firm Wellington Partners in London. He has a Masters in Communications Systems from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Alexander Grinberg - Founder and EVP/GM Account Aggregation
Alex is from Australia, where he lived near Bondi Beach and enjoyed the surf. He started his career in law and technology, as Senior Legal Counsel at IBM in Australia. After nearly 8 years there, he joined Oracle. Alex spent 7 years at Oracle, first as General Counsel for Australia & New Zealand and then, in an expanded role, as General Counsel for Nordics, Eastern Europe, Middle East & Africa. In 2000, Alex was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug and founded eWise. He was CEO until 2011 and led the company’s growth across the US, Europe and Asia Pacific. Today, Alex runs the eWise personal financial management and account aggregation business internationally. He is one of the inventors of client-side aggregation and holds a number of technology patents. Alex has a Diploma in Law from the University of Technology, Sydney.
Steven Pellizzer - CFO
Steve is a lifelong 49ers fan and grew up 5 blocks away from where the team used to practice. He is also a payments veteran with over 12 years of experience in the industry. Most recently, Steve was CFO of CyberSource, a publicly held leading provider of electronic payment and risk management solutions used by online merchants. While at CyberSource, Steve was a key member of the executive team responsible for growing revenue from $28 million to over $300 million, leading to Visa’s acquisition of CyberSource for $2 billion in June 2010. Prior to CyberSource, Steve was a manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP focused on the technology industry. Steve received a B.S. in Commerce from Santa Clara University and is a CPA.
Investors
Phillip Riese - Former President of Consumer Card Group at American Express
Phillip Riese joined the board as non-executive Chairman in 2011. Phillip spent over 20 years in leadership roles in the payments industry, initially at Chase and ultimately at American Express. He retired from American Express in 1998 as President of the Consumer Card Group and Chairman of American Express’ Centurion Bank, leading the teams that turned around American Express’ core business. Since leaving American Express, he has focused on co-investing in start-up and midsize companies that are potential leaders in providing disruptive financial services, advanced data analytics and next-generation marketing capabilities, serving on the boards of some and acting as an advisor to management in others.
Eric Archambeau - General Partner at Wellington Partners
Eric Archambeau joined the board in 2011. Prior to joining Wellington Partners, Eric was at Benchmark Capital from 2000-2002, where he led and co-led a number of European venture deals, including Betfair (listed in London BET.L), Almonde (acquired by Misys), and Instranet (acquired by Salesforce.com). Eric joined Benchmark from Atlas Venture, where, in Silicon Valley, he initiated a number of successful investments including Tsqware (acquired by Globespan) and Obongo (acquired by AOL). Before 1999, Eric was a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, first as co-founder and CEO of RightPoint (acquired by Epiphany), then as founding CEO of Trading Dynamics (acquired by Ariba). Eric was also a founding board member of eGroups, acquired by Yahoo! in 2000.
Bernard Liautaud - Partner at Balderton Capital
Bernard Liautaud joined the board in 2012. Bernard founded Business Objects in 1990, was CEO for 15 years then Chairman until 2008. With 6,700 employees, 45,000 customers and $1.5 billion of revenue in 2007, Business Objects was one of the 15 largest software companies in the world. Business Objects was the first European software IPO on Nasdaq in 1994. In January 2008, Business Objects was acquired by SAP for $6.8 billion, making it the third largest software acquisition at the time. Bernard is now a member of SAP’s supervisory board and Cap Gemini’s board. He has received a number of distinctions including Time Magazine Europe's Digital Top 25 and BusinessWeek Stars of Europe of 2002, and Top 10 CEOs in North America by Chief Executive Magazine in 2001.
Peter Rowley - Former Senior Executive at IBM
Peter Rowley joined the board in 2007. Peter joined IBM from high school as a trainee cadet in 1966 and retired in 2003. During that period he held a number of senior positions including CEO and General Manager IBM Korea; Vice President and General Manager, Operations, IBM Latin America; General Manager Corporate Customers, Europe and General Manager, Global Business Partners, IBM Corporation. In 1995, he was appointed as a Member of IBM World Management Council and remained as a member of the council until he retired in 2003.
Tom Smith - Co-founder & Managing Partner at TTV Capital
Tom Smith joined the board in 2008. Tom is a co-founder and managing partner of TTV Capital. He retired from IBM in 2000 after 30 years of service. From 1996 to his retirement, Tom served as vice president, Small and Medium Business, IBM Americas. Prior to that, he was the southern area general manager appointed in 1986, with responsibility for IBM’s sales, marketing and services business for thirteen states. Tom previously was on the board of directors of GreenDot, KnowledgeStorm and PayCycle. He currently serves on the board of directors of 3V, Silverpop, IP Commerce and Microbilt.