The Edinburgh-based firm is forecasting healthy growth in 2023 with over £1.5 billion of transactions projected to be processed in 2023.

BR-DGE’s independent network tokenisation engine marks the fintech’s latest product release, enabling merchants to optimise payment performance and authorisation rates, ensuring credentials are always kept up to date and provide secure payment offerings to consumers. It will be followed by the release of further products over the next year which underpin the BR-DGE platform.

Senior management changes to support new product strategy

Proceeding with its strategy, BR-DGE’s CEO and founder Brian Coburn is to serve as chief strategy officer with a focus on positioning BR-DGE at the heart of innovation and disruption within the payments industry.

Incumbent CFO Thomas Gillan will serve as CEO overseeing and leading BR-DGE’s scale-up phase, leveraging his experiences within high-growth technology companies. Both Mr Corburn and Mr Gillan will continue to work closely on strategic projects and drive BR-DGE’s ambitions as part of the business’ senior leadership team.

Brian Coburn, Chief Strategy Officer at BR-DGE, commented: “We have achieved significant milestones for the business over the last year, further disrupting the payments sector and building an amazingly talented team.

“From establishing major new industry partnerships, to recording a marked increase in new merchant acquisitions, I’m proud of the progress we have made.

“As we shift from start-up to scale-up, armed with an ambitious product strategy and a first-class team, I’m looking forward to working with Thomas and the leadership team to continue pushing the boundaries of payment technology.”

Thomas Gillan, CEO at BR-DGE, added: “Payment orchestration is coming of age and BR-DGE is uniquely positioned to become the category leader globally, thanks to Brian’s vision and passion.

“Through our relentless focus on customer experience, partners and merchants will experience the benefits of payment orchestration faster and more efficiently, giving them the flexibility to leverage the most valued components of orchestration in the payment flow.

“I’m hugely privileged to lead the organisation through its next stages of growth and look forward to working with Brian, the leadership team, and the board to build on our many achievements to date.”

Strategic hire to turbocharge retail sector relationships

To strengthen BR-DGE’s business development, it has hired Mark Whybrow to forge new relationships with players across the retail sector. This includes e-commerce platforms, online retailers and high-street stalwarts. Mr Whybrow is an experienced sales specialist having previously worked at Klarna, DNA Payments Group and Close Brothers Retail Finance.

It is the latest expansion in the business’ commercial team, led by head of commercial, Jacob Spencer, following the arrival of Emily Whalley as BR-DGE’s sales lead for the travel sector in June 2022.

Building a diverse marketplace of partners

BR-DGE is seeking to build a diverse marketplace of payment partners, adding a total of 10 new partners over the course of the last twelve months. Examples of major collaborations forged in 2022 include working with Vyne, the specialist account-to-account payments platform, global fintech disruptor Trust Payments and extending its partnership with Worldline.

Last week, BR-DGE and Visa announced a three-year partnership to offer innovative payment solutions to merchants and consumers, giving them greater choice in how they pay and get paid. The collaboration will focus on a range of digital commerce products and sets the tone for a strong year ahead for BR-DGE, with further expansion plans for their partnership program.