Balanced, the payment service that’s designed to help facilitate all the financial issues a marketplace typically needs to worry about, has picked up Patrick Breitenbach as its Vice President of Operations. Perhaps more notable, he once held the Operations role at event planning service Eventbrite.
The company says that Breitenbach was brought on board to help build out its support services, lead vendor/banking relationships, and “navigate the regulatory architecture behind our upcoming international expansion.”
Formerly known as PoundPay, the Y Combinator alumnus provides what it calls a “feature-rich, fully integrated API that allows marketplaces to charge cards, escrow funds, deposit next day via ACH direct, and collect their own marketplace fees.” In November, it raised $1.4 million from SV Angel, Airbnb’s Brian Chesky, Ashton Kutcher, and Yishan Wong.
As the story goes, in 1999, then 14 year old Matin Tamizi, ordered a webcam on eBay. When it was delivered by UPS, it collected payment using cash on delivery. A decade later, Tamizi began to build a real-time payments network and in December 2010, said he realized that the same problems from 1999 still existed in marketplaces today. With that, he brought on board other founders, including Mahmoud Abdelkader and Jareau Wade. Today, Balanced has several companies using its service, including Fancy, Crowdtilt, InstantCab, Visual.ly, and Zaarly.
With its new VP of Operations, the company is not hiring someone unfamiliar with its service. Before accepting the role, Breitenbach was an advisor and investor in the company. Since his role will be responsible for vendor/banking management, Breitenbach is taking that load off of Tamizi’s shoulders. Moving forward, the co-founder will be in charge of building out the product and generating strategic partnerships.
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The company says that one of the most interesting things that Breitenbach brings to the table is “his rare combination of having done it all before, but being excited about rolling up his sleeves and doing it again.” Previously, he worked at American Express, PayPal (pre-IPO), and as stated earlier, Eventbrite. In all those cases, he has worked with a payment or support service — something that will most undoubtedly come in handy at Balanced.
Breitenbach’s addition isn’t the only news that the company has. Akbar Thobhani, the former head of payments at Airbnb and the former director of product management at BOKU has joined Balanced’s board of directors. The company named Thobhani to the seat because it says he has “deep knowledge of managing banking relationships and international regulation issues.”
Balanced now has 11 employees in the company, including Breitenbach. The company says to date, it has signed up around 250 marketplaces, with dozens more in “active development.”
Photo credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
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