Dive Brief:

• Global business payments company FleetCor Technologies and Corcentric, a payments software provider for middle market companies, both appointed chief financial officers on Tuesday. Tom Panther of EVO Payments is taking the financial helm of Atlanta-based FleetCor, effective May 12, and payments industry veteran Chuck Bernicker joins 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, and CFOs face increased pressure and job creep. 

Dive Insight:

PayPal, MoneyGram, Shift4 and Fidelity National Information Services all announced changes to their financial helms within the same week last August, 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, where he had been CFO since 2019. EVO Payments was recently acquired by payment processor Global Payments.

Panther 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. Before that, from 2012 until 2018, he served as CFO of CardConnect prior to its acquisition by First Data (which has since merged with Fiserv), and was an executive director of Heartland Payment Systems from 2010 until 2012. Additionally, Bernicker has held leadership roles at Bank of America and TD Bank, while also serving as 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. Vickery stepped up to the plate in September 2022 when former CFO and longtime company veteran Charles Freund resigned to become CFO of Fullsteam, an Auburn, Alabama-based payments and software provider. Freund had been with FleetCor almost 22 years, and took the CFO seat in 2020. 

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

Just this week, Hertz Global Holdings promoted its 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.