Why I Joined Basis Theory as Chief Payments Officer

Over the past 20 years I’ve had the chance to see payments from a lot of angles. From banks, to building a startup, to payments partnerships and operations at Amazon, and most recently building and leading payments at Chewy.

One lesson becomes clear when you’ve lived in the payments world long enough.

The vault is the heart of modern payments.

Control of payment credentials determines your flexibility, independence, and ability to optimize payments over time. And for merchants, that control should always remain in their hands.

For years, only the largest companies had the resources to build and maintain this kind of infrastructure themselves. Massive PCI programs, custom vault systems, and routing engines made sense for companies operating at enormous scale. But for most businesses, the cost and complexity of building and maintaining that infrastructure simply doesn’t create a competitive advantage.

That reality became clear during my time at Chewy when we began pursuing a multi-processor strategy. Like many engineering-driven companies, our first instinct was to ask whether we should build the vault ourselves. It didn’t take long to realize that while vault infrastructure is essential, building it internally would only distract from the things that actually differentiate a business.

The smarter path was finding the right partner.

After evaluating the landscape, one platform stood out: Basis Theory.

What impressed me immediately was the depth of the architecture and the philosophy behind it. The agnostic vault was not marketing language. It was real. Their infrastructure allowed us to design the payments stack we wanted without introducing lock-in, while still delivering the security, reliability, and features required by a modern card-on-file business.

Just as important was the team. The technical expertise, speed of innovation, and genuine partnership mindset made them feel like an extension of our own payments organization.

That experience is a big reason that after several years as a customer, I’m excited to join Basis Theory as Chief Payments Officer.

We are entering a new era in commerce. Payment stacks are becoming more fragmented, multi-processor strategies are increasingly common, and new forms of automated and AI-driven commerce are emerging quickly. These changes raise important questions about trust, identity, and how merchants maintain control of the customer relationship.

Those are the right questions. But eventually it's time for action, and that time is now. The infrastructure layer needs to evolve so merchants can move forward with confidence. In the next era of commerce, trust in transactions will depend on who controls the data layer.

Basis Theory is the foundation that allows merchants to embrace these changes while maintaining control over what makes their business unique. Through close partnerships across payment networks, processors, and emerging technology platforms, they are helping merchants unlock capabilities that were previously available only to the largest companies.

That idea has been a personal passion of mine for a long time and it’s a core to why I joined Basis Theory. Some of the best payments infrastructure in the world was built inside the largest and most sophisticated companies. The exciting opportunity now is making those capabilities available to businesses everywhere.

I’m excited to bring an operator’s perspective to the team and help continue building the infrastructure that will power the next generation of commerce.