Dive Brief:

• Account-to-account payments player Dwolla appointed Daniel Quezada as its new CFO, according to a company release Wednesday. Quezada previously held senior finance roles at retail giant Walmart and fast food restaurant chain Burger King Holdings, and most recently served as finance chief of the software company 8base, where he helped scale financial and operational functions. 
• Dwolla CEO Dave Glaser said Quezada’s experience will be an asset as the company seeks to grow. "His experience in financial strategy and operations will be a huge asset as we scale,” Glaser said in a statement in the release.
• Operating as a smaller player in the market requires a multifaceted strategic approach, Quezada said in an emailed response to a question about how he plans to help Dwolla compete. He said he would ensure the company allocates financial resources to support innovation and enhance its platform. “This includes investing in technology to differentiate ourselves, focusing on niche markets, and crucially, building and strengthening existing partnerships with industry leaders like Visa, Mastercard, and Plaid,” he said. “This collaborative approach allows us to leverage their established networks and expertise, complementing our own strengths.”

Dive Insight:

The move comes less than two years after the Des Moines, Iowa-based company hired Lawrence Herman, a financial technology and payments veteran, to become finance chief, CFO Dive previously reported.

Herman, who was CFO at Dwolla for a year, has been finance chief at Cents, a business management system for laundromats and dry cleaners since September, according to his LinkedIn profile. In 2024, the company’s existing senior leadership “absorbed the responsibility of the CFO to ensure continuity and stability as we thoroughly searched for the right candidate to lead our financial strategy,” according to a statement emailed to CFO Dive describing the transition period prior to Quezada’s appointment.

Dwolla’s new finance chief is joining as the company faces big-name competition in the growing A2A space. Earlier this year, Visa CEO Ryan McInerney said that the biggest U.S. card network remained ready to offer A2A services in the U.K. this year, before rolling it out elsewhere in Europe and beyond, CFO Dive sister publication Payments Dive reported.  

The service, which is also known as “pay-by-bank,” is popular with merchants seeking to avoid card interchange fees. While there are concerns around the "irrevocable nature” of bank-to-bank transfers and the potential for scams, the value of the global A2A transactions is projected to rise to $5.7 trillion by 2029 from $1.7 trillion in 2024 as the development of anti-fraud solutions boosts consumer trust, according to a recent study from marketing research and consulting firm Juniper Research.  

In 2024, Dwolla processed $67 billion in transactions for over 20 million users, up from $50 billion processed in 2023, according to Quezada. The platform supports a large number of consumer users but it specializes in facilitating B2B money movement.

Quezada, 53, worked at Bentonville, Arkansas-based Walmart for a five year stint ending in 2018 and later, for a little more than a year ending in April 2022, as director of enterprise FP&A and cost transformation, during which his profile said he drove “tens of millions” of SG&A expense reductions. At Dwolla he said he would also evaluate spending and make sure investments are “efficient, and contribute to long-term value creation.”