Pay.com.au, a B2B payments and rewards platform, has promoted David Walsh to the company’s first ever CMO role. Walsh has been elevated from his previous role as head of digital, CX and marketing.
For the first CMO of pay.com.au, the promotion is “a solidification of the growth the business and the marketing function has seen.”
“It’s an evolution of my journey with pay.com.au,” Walsh told B&T.
“Pay was a business that was incubated in a points business called Point Hacks. I’ve spent the past eight years plus living and breathing what points means to an Australian, both from a consumer perspective and a business perspective.
“From growing the team from zero marketers at at pay.com.au into the fantastic team we have now. It’s just a solidification of the growth that the business has seen over the journey and then the growth of the marketing team in really driving a business that’s now processed $20 billion in payments and has over 30,000 businesses actively using the platform every quarter.”
Walsh brings specialised expertise in the points and rewards industry to the executive team. Coming to the payments sector directly from the points industry, he previously spent four years as head of product and marketing at frequent flyer publisher Point Hacks. There he helped millions of Australians maximise their rewards, building an understanding of award pricing and the core mechanics of what makes points valuable.
As the first marketer and one of the earliest pay.com.au employees who built its initial growth engine, Walsh now leads the marketing arm, the loyalty program and company-wide AI enablement while supporting the platform’s US expansion.
Walsh’s promotion follows as the B2B payments and rewards platform has recently launched in the US under the the new brand name PayRewards.
Walsh added why the business has gone abroad.
“Pay.com.au in Australia has proven itself to be a successful business, and it’s also proven that there is a an appetite for business owners to get something from their rewards. And if we look at the points appetite in Australia, there’s definitely points appetite in North America. Americans love their miles,” he added.
“But what’s interesting is both payments and rewards in the two environments are actually quite different. And the rewards proposition that makes sense for an American business owner is different from the rewards proposition in Australia. The core idea, principle and marketing message is the same, but the nuance between the two markets is definitely there.”
For the Melbourne-born fintech company, the expansion into the US is a great opportunity to raise “both boats with the tide”.
“It’s an opportunity for growth not only in the US. market, but learnings that we get from our expansion in the US can absolutely be applied in the Australian market as well. “It’s a case of having both parts of the business continually pushing, trying different things, and talking to each other, so that as you do grow, you grow both at the same time,” Walsh said.
Pay.com.au also promoted two execs.
Basem Emera has been elevated to executive general manager of revenue, following his successful tenure as head of growth. In his expanded remit, Emera unites customer acquisition, activation, account management and strategic partnerships under a single commercial leader.
Emera brings over 15 years of experience scaling venture-backed technology companies. He spent more than four years shaping the global growth engine at Australian tech unicorn Go1, followed by executive commercial roles at both FrankieOne and KAST.
Yvonne Gilmour has also been promoted to executive general manager of customer operations, previously serving as head of operations, support and CX. Gilmour brings over two decades of financial services expertise to oversee large-scale service delivery and customer experience, having served as global chief customer officer at Afterpay. She has also held senior leadership roles at Latitude Financial Services and GE Capital.
