Todd Clyde is chief executive of Token.io, a London, England, company whose API lets payment providers and merchants take payments straight from customers' bank accounts. He joined in 2016 as chief operating officer and became chief executive in 2019, taking over from founder Steve Kirsch. Read our review of Token.io.
Three Decades in Enterprise Software
He spent 12 years at Accenture and then 21 years at four start-ups, one of which ended in a $1 billion exit. He joined Token after meeting Kirsch and hearing his plan for modernising payments in a way banks would accept. "The opportunity to participate in two of the biggest disruptions to hit the payments and banking industries in many years, open banking and cryptocurrencies, was too good to pass up," he told FinTecBuzz in 2019.
Focusing Token on Bank Payments
He has steered Token toward payments while many open-banking firms focused on account data. "Our narrow focus has enabled us to develop deep functionality that makes accepting bank direct payments elegant and simple," he said. His advice to start-ups selling to banks is "not to underestimate the length of sales cycle or the compliance, security and regulatory infrastructure that is required to work with them."
