AAA Payfone hires team

Payfone hires team

Payfone, a US-based payment processing company backed by American Express, Verizon and Rogers Communications, has hired three executives.

The company has appointed Prakash Hariramani as vice president and head of products. Hariramani was previously head of emerging consumer products at Visa, and "drove execution" for Visa’s digital wallet.

It has also hired William Murray as vice president of financial institution sales, from MasterCard Worldwide where he was responsible for its e-commerce strategy focused on merchants.

Amy Masters has joined the company as director of marketing from her role as vice president of marketing at American Express.

In April last year Payfone added $19m from a consortium including credit card company American Express (Amex) as the largest investor and Rogers Communications’ corporate venturing unit in its first disclosed deal.

Alongside Amex and Rogers in the round were phone operator Verizon’s Investments unit (assisted by corporate venturing operation Verizon Ventures), phone maker Research In Motion’s  BlackBerry Partners Fund and venture capital firms Opus Capital and RRE Ventures.

In August, Payfone raised $11m in its series B round, including from corporate venturing fund BlackBerry Partners.

The company previously raised $1.6m, according to news provider PEHub.com. RRE Ventures incubated Payfone in March 2008.

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