Dive Brief:

• Global payments providers FleetCor and Corcentric both appointed CFOs on Tuesday, with Tom Panther of EVO Payments taking the financial helm of Atlanta, Ga.-based FleetCor, effective May 12, and payments industry veteran Chuck Bernicker joining Cherry Hill, N.J.-based Corcentric, effective immediately, the companies both announced in statements. 
• Panther succeeds FleetCor’s interim CFO, Alissa Vickery, who will now be returning to her previous post as chief accounting officer. Meanwhile, Bernicker already started his role at Corcentric in February, ahead of the announcement, according to his LinkedIn profile.
• The two moves come as the payments industry, like many others, is facing headwinds from an unfavorable macro environment. This comes on the heels of four major payments companies bringing in new CFOs within a single week in August.

Dive Insight:

PayPal, MoneyGram, Shift4 and Fidelity National Information Services all announced changes to their financial helms within the same week, Industry Dive sister publication Payments Dive previously reported. Some of the companies had also reported disappointing financial results which may have had a role in the flurry of exits.

Now, FleetCor and Corcentric are experiencing churn with the CFO seat as well. 

Panther comes to FleetCor from EVO Payments, a payment technology integrations and acquiring solutions provider prior to its acquisition by Global Payments, where he had been CFO since 2019. He is set to receive an annual base salary of $400,000, with a target bonus percentage under the company’s annual cash incentive program of 75% of his base salary, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Meanwhile, Bernicker, who started his career with Ernst & Young, is a veteran of the payments industry. 

He was CEO of South Mountain Merger Corp. — which merged with Billtrust in January 2021 — up until December of 2022 and before that, served as CFO of CardConnect prior to their sale of First Data (now Fiserv) from 2012 until 2018, and was an executive director of Heartland Payments Systems from 2010 until 2012. Additionally, Bernicker has held leadership roles at Bank of America and TD Bank, while also a member of the card operations risk executive council for Visa, the release said. 

“As we look to substantially grow our customer base, his deep understanding of our business model will allow him to ensure we maximize our increasing financial returns and make the most of our existing book of business,” said Matt Clark, president and chief operating officer of Corcentric, in the statement. 

The newly-minted finance chief over at FleetCor succeeds interim CFO Vickery, who will now resume her post as chief accounting officer. In September of 2022, Vickery stepped up to the plate when former CFO and longtime company veteran Charles Freund, who resigned to become CFO of Fullstream, an Auburn, AL.- based payments and software provider, which provides companies with payments infrastructure and enhanced operational support, according to an SEC filing. Freund had been with the company for almost 22 years, and took the CFO seat in 2020. 

That “unidentified private-equity backed software company” was Fullstream, an Auburn, AL.- based payments and software provider, which provides companies with payments infrastructure and enhanced operational support. 

FleetCor is one of several companies who have tapped insider team members as a means to handle CFO churn in recent months. 

Just this week, Hertz Global Holdings promoted their chief accounting officer to an interim CFO position when finance chief Kenny Cheung departed from the company to take on a different CFO role at Sysco.