James Phillips. Image: Stripe
Stripe said Phillips’ experience building companies will be instrumental as the fintech business works to expand its portfolio.
Stripe has appointed James Phillips as its new president of financial services.
Phillips joins Stripe after working with Microsoft for more than a decade. He was a corporate VP for eight years with the tech giant, before he became president of its Digital Transformation Platform Group in 2020.
He helped grow this group to 15,000 employees, developing products across six continents and generating more than $15bn in annual revenue.
Phillips was previously co-founder and CEO of software company Akimbi Systems, which was acquired by VMware in 2006, and was also co-founder and CEO of Couchbase.
He is currently strategic director with venture capital firm Madrona Venture Group and a board member of security services company F5.
Speaking about his appointment, Phillips said the economy is undergoing a “fundamental shift” as companies take advantage of new software, machine learning and the internet.
“Stripe is ideally positioned to serve as the engine behind these opportunities,” Phillips added. “I look forward to working alongside the entire financial services team as we continue to build out Stripe’s platform for the decades ahead.”
Stripe, founded by Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison, said Phillips’ experience with development and company building would be “instrumental” as the fintech continues to expand its portfolio.
The company has been rolling out more services that go beyond the payments processing it was originally built on, from tax tools to card issuing services.
“James brings a rare mix of experience as a software engineer, repeat entrepreneur and experienced enterprise leader,” Stripe CEO Patrick Collison said.
“He drove tremendously impressive product development and innovation at Microsoft. More broadly, his empathy for users, from start-ups to the world’s largest companies, will help him as he guides our teams in solving critical business problems for millions of organisations,” Collison added.
Phillips’ new role follows the recent appointments of Dhivya Suryadevara as chief financial officer, Carmel Galvin as chief people officer and Mike Clayville as chief revenue officer.
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