On December 17, Checkout.com, a popular global payment processing firm, announced that it hired Meta executive Meron Colbeci as its Chief Product Officer. Colbeci joins Checkout.com as he departs from Meta Inc., where he was Head of Consumer Product Management at Novi, Meta’s fintech product group. Before joining Meta, Colbeci served as a senior product leader at SoFi and PayPal. Thus, he brings in-depth fiat and crypto payments as well as financial services experience to Checkout.com. In the new role, Colbeci will oversee Checkout.com’s product operations, product management and design functions across the world.
The announcement is part of Checkout.com’s wider executive team expansion, including adding new positions such as CFO, CHRO, CMO, CRO and CTO made earlier this year. The development marks a significant focus by the company to continue improving its cloud-based service offerings to enterprise-scale merchants across the globe.
Colbeci was attracted by the job opportunity because of Checkout.com’s unique and differentiated vision for the future and its continued investment in alternative payments solutions and emerging digital currency technologies.
Guillaume Pousaz, the Founder and CEO at Checkout.com, talked about the development and said: “At our core, we are passionate about the application of emerging technologies to solve real-world opportunities for enterprise merchants. Meron’s experience as a close partner and customer at Novi, and his years with numerous other fintech leaders, means he’s well-positioned to take our product efforts to the next level. I’m excited to partner with him as we push the boundaries of what’s possible.”
In addition, Colbeci commented about the appointment and stated: “Having worked with Checkout.com before, I had a good sense of how great the technology was and how capable the team was. As I spent more time with Guillaume and the rest of the leadership team, I was inspired by the focus on building customer-first technologies that will help democratize access to the digital economy.”
Colbeci will first work at Checkout.com’s office in the San Francisco Bay area, California, but he plans to relocate with his family to the facility of the firm’s product and development efforts in Europe over the next year.
Meta Continues with Crypto Plans
The development by Checkout.com’s hiring Colbeci comes at a time when executives working at Meta Inc are continuing to leave the company. This month, Stan Chudnovsky, the Head of Meta’s Messenger division, announced that he would be leaving the firm in 2022. In late November, David Marcus, the Head of Facebook’s cryptocurrency efforts, announced that he is leaving the company at the end of this year.
Other high-profile executives who departed Meta Inc., include the following. Fidji Simo, the head of the Facebook app, left the firm in July and became the CEO of Instacart. Facebook’s former Ads Chief, Carolyn Everson, left the firm and joined grocery delivery app Instacart as its President in June. David Fischer, Facebook’s Chief Revenue Officer, announced his departure in March. Kevin Weil, one of the Co-Founders of Facebook’s Novi cryptocurrency division also announced his departure in the same month as David Fischer. Moreover, the former Head of Facebook Marketplace, Deborah Liu, left the company in February to become the Chief Executive Officer of Ancestry.com.
Meta Inc. is witnessing increased regulatory scrutiny and a major public relations challenge as a release of internal documents and new reports show how much the firm knows about the harm caused by its services. Marcus’s departure comes after the firm tried and failed to launch a cryptocurrency that could be used to send money online to anyone in the globe via Facebook products. Meta initially had an ambitious plan to make sending money across borders as easy as sending a text message. But, the plan was met with increased scrutiny following its announcement in 2019. The firm scaled back the plan for Libra (now Diem cryptocurrency) and Calibra (now Novi digital wallet) through a series of modifications after facing an exodus of key corporate backers. Meta is currently allowing some WhatsApp users in the US to send and receive money using the newly launched Novi wallet. The move is part of a pilot program that the company is undertaking in Guatemala and the US to test Novi’s functionality. The company is designing Novi wallet to enable the transfer of money internationally and instantly with no fees to send or receive money.
