Before joining TrueLayer, Michael was Director of UK Enterprise Sales at PayPal where he led the company’s growth strategy across retail, grocery, iGaming and travel, reporting to UK and EMEA management teams.

He joined PayPal in 2011 as Head of Digital Goods, working across a broad portfolio of merchants including Sony, Steam, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft and was part of PayPal’s prestigious global Emerging Leaders Programme. Prior to this, he worked in strategic partnership and business development roles at Nokia for four years.

TrueLayer has recently announced a partnership with UK retailer Topps Tiles, which has over 300 physical stores across the UK, as well as a strong online and mobile offering. This builds on partnerships in ecommerce including with online car retailer Cazoo, and last year’s launch of a plugin enabling WooCommerce merchants to instantly add open banking payments to their checkout.

TrueLayer recently published new research, the Payments Experience Playbook, illustrating how poor payments experiences are costing merchants, with 87% of consumers expressing frustration with payments and 56% of merchants reporting that they are dealing with a drop in conversion due to strong customer authentication (SCA) implementation.

Michael Brown, Head of Ecommerce at TrueLayer, said: “Open banking payments have the potential to transform customer experience in ecommerce, addressing the headaches that merchants have faced for decades in using legacy systems and outdated card infrastructure. “We are seeing increasing adoption of open banking by merchants and consumers alike and I am incredibly excited about the opportunity for TrueLayer in ecommerce, as Europe’s leading open banking payments network.”

Commenting, TrueLayer Co-Founder and CEO Francesco Simoneschi said:

“Mike has a solid track record in driving growth across verticals and in building and leading high-performing teams. We are really happy to welcome him to TrueLayer as we continue to accelerate adoption of open banking payments in ecommerce and retail.”