Dive Brief:

• Charlotte, North Carolina-based Paymentus Holdings appointed Sanjay Kalra as its new senior vice president and CFO, effective Monday, replacing Paul Seamon, who has served as interim CFO since Sept. 9, according to a Monday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Seamon will resume his prior role as vice president of finance and strategy.
• Kalra, 50, was previously the SVP and CFO of the virtualized broadband and video delivery solutions company Harmonic. He also previously held other finance roles including chief accounting officer at Harmonic and corporate controller at TiVo Inc. He began his career in public accounting at Ernst & Young.  
• The electronic billing and payment company’s board approved a compensation package for Kalra that includes an annual base salary of $500,000, a target annual cash bonus of $500,000 subject to performance and other criteria, as well as an award of restricted stock units with a grant date value of $4 million on or about his start date, according to the filing.

Dive Insight:

Paymentus’ announcement of its CFO pick comes less than a month after it handed a severage agreement to Seamon.

If Seamon were terminated under certain qualifying terms and without cause, the agreement provided that he would continue to be paid his base salary and health care premiums for six months after leaving the company. Seamon’s annual base salary was $335,000, according to an employment agreement filed with the SEC in November. 

At the time, the company in an email to CFO Dive stated that the agreement was a formality and not an indication of a plan for Seamon to leave the company, by choice or termination, nor was it indicative of any decision regarding the CFO search process. 

But the severance agreement’s timing, coming roughly five months after Seamon took the interim role, suggested it was a sort of retention strategy signaling that he would be compensated for sticking it out, Shawn Cole, president of the boutique executive search firm Cowen Partners, previously told CFO Dive. Most internal interim CFOs typically want to retain the seat permanently and that agreement was likely the board’s effort to avoid losing Seamon, he said. 

Paymentus has been adding bill payment partners to its roster, announcing in January it was partnering with Green Dot to expand its cash bill pay capabilities, Industry Dive sister publication Payments Dive previously reported. In 2020 the company announced its collaboration with Walmart to let customers pay their bills in Walmart stores and on the retailer’s mobile app.