Fintech Industry Executives from Earnest, Plaid, Fiserv, and Q2 join Atomic Advisory Board

Salt Lake City, May 12, 2021 – Leading payroll API pioneer Atomic today announced the members of its newly formed strategic Advisory Board. In its mission to build a new generation of bank accounts and transform consumer-centric applications, Atomic has assembled executives, entrepreneurs, and subject matter experts across the fintech, technology, and financial services ecosystems.

This esteemed group brings fresh perspectives on fueling momentum in the payroll API market amid rapid demand from early adopters. The four members draw experience from Fortune 500 organizations including Amazon, Citigroup, and Fiserv, as well as category defining companies such as Plaid, LendingClub, Simple, and SmartyPig.

“The caliber of our advisory board is further validation of Atomic’s payroll API market. Having dynamic perspectives to draw from will be invaluable as we enter new fintech verticals and expand our reach with financial institutions.”

Jordan Wright, Atomic CEO and co-founder

“Each advisory board member brings a blend of experiences from founding a startup, to running a multi-hundred million dollar revenue business unit,” said Jordan Wright, Atomic’s CEO and co-founder.  “We are honored they have chosen to be a part of Atomic’s journey. The caliber of our advisory board is further validation of Atomic’s payroll API market. Having dynamic perspectives to draw from will be invaluable as we enter new fintech verticals and expand our reach with financial institutions.”

Regulated by multiple jurisdictions and with market-specific compliance requirements, Atomic will benefit from its advisors’ experiences in educating policy makers as well as partnering with incumbent institutions. As Atomic expands applications for its payroll APIs, saving millions of consumers from overdraft fees or predatory interest rates with faster direct deposits, the company will be guided by leaders from iconic fintech brands that have collectively saved consumers billions in fees and interest.

Following the announcement, Atomic is releasing a series of one-on-one interviews profiling each member of the Advisory Board, with the first available today on Atomic’s Insights page.

Atomic Advisory Board Members

	Susan Ehrlich Over the last two decades, Ehrlich has held leadership roles at Citigroup, Sears, H&R Block, Amazon, Lending Club, Simple and, most recently, Earnest, where she served as CEO. Ehrlich shepherded Earnest’s integration with parent Navient and grew the firm into the second-largest student refinance lender in the country. In 2021, she announced her retirement from the C-suite to focus on board service, including joining Atomic’s advisory board, as well as advising and investing in fintech entrepreneurs.
	Michael Ferrari Mike Ferrari is an entrepreneur whose inventions, including CorePro, the first SaaS core-processing API, were the genesis of the banking-as-a-service (BaaS) category. The CorePro technology was spun out of SmartyPig, the startup Ferrari co-founded and was later acquired by Q2 Holdings in 2015. SmartyPig, now acquired by Sallie Mae, was one of the first personal finance apps launched during the post-financial crisis era that has helped cash-strapped consumers save over $5 billion. As a Vice President of Product and Sales, Ferrari led Q2’s successful integration of SmartyPig and CorePro, collectively Social Money, which comprise the infrastructure that many of the largest fintech companies build upon. Today, Ferrari is a Senior Vice President of Fintech Sales and Market Development at MVB Financial Corp, an investor and advisor to entrepreneurs, and father.
	Rahul Gupta Rahul Gupta has over 35 years’ experience in the financial services and fintech industries, having served in a variety of capacities at the board and executive levels. Currently, Gupta is a board member and advisor for multiple public and private companies, not-for-profit institutions, and private equity and venture capital funds. Most recently, he was CEO of RevSpring, a high growth fintech in healthcare. For the ten years prior to that, he was Executive Vice President and Group President at Fiserv (Nasdaq: FISV), a $13 billion financial infrastructure and technology provider in the Fortune 500. Other career highlights include serving as President of US Operations for eFunds Corp., a $500 million payments and risk management solutions provider, as well as serving in senior management roles at Fidelity Investments and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
	Charley Ma Ma is currently the General Manager of Fintech at Alloy, a leader in the identity decisioning and fraud prevention infrastructure sector. Prior to Alloy, Ma was Head of Growth at Ramp, a B2B corporate card and spend management platform, where he helped launch the first corporate card designed to save time and money. Before joining Ramp, Ma was the first business hire at Plaid, an infrastructure provider that enables developers to connect into financial accounts, where he led the fintech and developer sales vertical, directly contributed millions in bottom line revenue, and built out the firm’s New York office. Ma started his career at JPMorgan focused on emerging technology for payments and is an active angel investor in fintech and developer infrastructure-focused startups.

About Atomic

Atomic is the market leading provider of payroll APIs, trusted by 10 of the largest fintech firms, including digital-first neobanks, alternative lenders, and digital brokerages. Atomic’s payroll integrations provide the infrastructure to connect end consumers to financial data and automate setting up and updating direct deposits. Atomic’s vision is to enable wealth creation for consumers by building more on-ramps to financial services.

Atomic simplifies complicated payroll integrations with a single API that covers over 165 unique payroll connections. Including incumbent payroll providers, bespoke enterprise solutions, modern HR tech providers, gig-economy platforms and government systems, Atomic’s payroll APIs cover approximately 65% of the US workforce with a combined reach of 95 million workers. Atomic has raised $13.6 million from investors, including Core Innovation Capital, Portag3, and Greylock.

The press release is available on PR Newswire