Lloyd Fernandes

Payments Architect & Product Builder · Player-Coach from 0→1 to Exits

llonandes@gmail.com llonandes.online linkedin.com/in/llonandes SF Bay Area

A payments-platform product leader who aligns three things that usually drift apart: the product roadmap, financial reconciliation, and the story told to investors.

A 28-year career in technology, 18 of them in payments. The first nine anchored at PayPal and Blackhawk; the nine since, in platform leadership roles focused on taking growth-stage companies to exit and reinventing stalled businesses. Played a key role in building two of these platforms that were acquired — Verifi by Visa, and Payrix by FIS/Worldpay.

Experience

Canary Technologies

Jun 2025 – Feb 2026

Product Leader, Global Payments

Grew the payments business ~30% to ~$9M ARR across three products: Digital Authorizations (wedge), Payment Links (new), and Digital Contracts (needed revival). Launched Canary AI Contracts with the first-ever Payment Hub for Hotel Sales & Catering teams.
Managed 20+ PSP integrations (Stripe, Adyen, Shift4, Elavon, Nexi, Global Blue, Ant Financials) to unblock global clients and negotiate referral revenue.
Modeled a $100M ARR scale-up plan covering unit economics, enterprise expansion, and PSP tiering. Founders elected to deploy that capital into AI innovations for hotels — a strategic pivot for the company.

Stax Payments

Jun 2024 – May 2025

VP Product, Money Movement · Contract

Recruited by the CEO and executive team within 3 days to launch Stax Processing on a money-movement platform (acquired from FIS for ~$4M) that was misfit in Stax’s architecture — leaking merchant payouts and failing third-party ACH for ISV partners.
Ran build-or-buy under PE pressure; delivered fix over replace, saving millions and months of work; stabilized $500M+ monthly TPV / $20M daily ACH, initiated external NACHA audits, and extended to Platform Reconciliations across card brands, sponsor banks, and platforms.

Yodlee / Envestnet

Oct 2021 – May 2024

VP Product, Banking & Payments

Recruited by the CPO to lead Payments at Yodlee — a ~$200M ARR division of Envestnet (public, ~$1B revenue) serving 17 of the top US banks. Inherited Account Verifications ($25M mature wedge).
Launched two 0→1 products: Account Tokens (bank-account analog to card tokens) to reinvent the wedge, and Subscription & Bill Tracker on Yodlee’s data core (in deployment discussions with BoA Diamond, Navy Federal Credit Union). Together drove 5–8% gross revenue increase. Envestnet later slowed under investor pressure; Yodlee transitioned to PE-owned.

Payrix — acquired by FIS/Worldpay

Sep 2020 – Sep 2021

VP Product, Payment Facilitation

Recruited by PE investors to drive next-stage growth and set up the exit. Built multi-processor framework adding Fiserv/Wells Fargo alongside existing FIS/TD Bank — unlocking the next revenue leg and removing concentration risk.
Unblocked the M&A cycle mid-process by engineering reconciliation that matched platform dollars against bank and card-brand settlement end-to-end. Scaled the product team from 5 to 15 and drove full brand redesign under M&A pressure. Grew run-rate ARR from $10M to $50M. Acquired by FIS/Worldpay; now Worldpay for Platforms within Global Payments.

Rapyd

Sep 2018 – Sep 2020

Sr. Director, Product — Payment Networks

As first US product hire (Mountain View), built the first E2E partner integration on APMs — seed of RPGN (Rapyd Global Payments Network), which grew to 60+ APMs and 1,000+ payment methods competing with Stripe and Adyen.
Built 0→1 Global Issuing Platform in Mexico (adopted by Uber and Rappi for driver cards); extended issuer infrastructure into Brazil and South Africa. Built US ACH rails with Evolve Bank & Trust; scaled global product org across SFO, Tel Aviv, and Singapore. Rapyd now valued at $5B+.

Verifi — acquired by Visa

May 2017 – Aug 2018

Director, Payments & Risk

Owned three product lines at the industry leader in Chargeback Management, feeding the CB flywheel: Payment Platform (NMI white-label), Intel Suite (proprietary multi-vendor processing toolset), and Decline Salvage.
Built automatic Account Updater to deprecate Decline Salvage; re-platformed the stack. Cut fraud losses ~50%, risk exposure 20%. Built foundations that contributed to the Visa acquisition.

PayPal

Apr 2012 – Apr 2017

Product Leader, Global Core Payments

Shipped the first-ever PayPal Card with The Home Depot as PayPal’s first in-store rollout — owned the build and rollout to first 25K users (80%+ activations); project shelved at 11 months as PayPal pivoted to mobile-first.
Rebuilt consumer mobile app payment-instruments layer (cards, banks, balances, FX) — 208 markets / 10M+ downloads. On Core Payments: re-architected the Stored Value platform, foundational tech for PayPal Wallet; launched global holdings system for 200M+ users / 25 currencies.

Blackhawk Network

Jul 2008 – Apr 2012

Principal Systems Engineer (Prepaid Card Network)

Built and managed the high-capacity payment processing engine sustaining ~2,700 TPS — backbone of Blackhawk’s prepaid network through every holiday-season peak.
Designed and launched the global NOC’s real-time financial-transactions dashboard — 50% reduction in response times.

Side Projects

DuesSync

Feb 2026 – Present

Founder · Payments-for-Membership SaaS

Designed and shipped a Stripe-integrated dues platform for fraternal councils; live with paying customers. Solo build across product, engineering, and GTM.

Skills

Payments rails: ACH, RTP, FedNow, Visa Direct, push-to-card, card networks (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover), cross-border, 60+ alternative payment methods.

Platforms & PSPs: Stripe, Adyen, Shift4, Elavon, Nexi, Global Blue, Ant Financials, Fiserv, Wells Fargo, Plaid; orchestration across 20+ global PSPs.

Compliance & risk: NACHA, PCI DSS, KYC/AML, fraud rules, risk modeling, regulatory audits, M&A/diligence prep.

Product & strategy: Payment orchestration, payment facilitation (PayFac), embedded payments, money movement, prepaid & issuing, reconciliation, 0→1 launches, P&L ownership, fix-vs-buy evaluation.

Leadership: Cross-functional org building (5–25 people), PE/board engagement, executive presentation, fractional CPO.

Education

Ph.D., Business Strategy & Innovation — Capella University2020

Dissertation: Value co-creation and customer involvement in product development. ProQuest · Google Scholar

MBA, General Management — Saint Mary's College of California2014

B.Sc., Physics — University of Mumbai1997