A former Westpac executive, Jamie will take over as chief executive officer from founder, Tarek Ayoub as the business looks to kick on after a period of rapid early growth.

Jamie has worked across financial services in both the United States and Australia, most recently as Westpac’s chief strategy officer and before that as chief data officer.

Tarek, who started the rapidly growing fintech in January last year, will stay with the company to focus on global growth and product innovation.

Unlike the similarly named Afterpay, Beforepay enables users to access up to 25 per cent of their salaries before their employer pays them, with the funds able to be spent anywhere, on anything. Its backers include Alium Capital and Vocus founder and Airtasker chairman James Spenceley.

Tarek said it had become apparent that the company needed a CEO with more business experience to execute on its plans. “We’ve realised now we’re becoming more of a ‘corporatised’ company that we need to bring the professional in to ensure that we’re managing right,” he said. “And we were also basically aligned from day one on what the strategy should be from here, which gave me great comfort for Jamie to be the one to take it forward.”

The swift uptake by consumers also means more scrutiny is imminent, particularly if it proceeds with its stated plans to go public.

Beforepay has 300,000 registered users – people who have made an app account but have not necessarily used the service – and has completed more than $70 million in wage instalments since its launch. The team has grown from three to 30 in the past year.

In start-up parlance, it’s a great growth story. But the swift uptake by consumers also means more scrutiny is imminent, particularly if it proceeds with its stated plans to go public.

“I think we, as a company, are prepared for that level of scrutiny and I’m personally prepared for it as well. I think Beforepay starts in a very strong position when it comes to any kind of scrutiny from regulators, the markets, media or anyone else,” Jamie said.

“Beforepay is a company that plays a constructive role in Australian society and in the lives of our customers. We provide customers with financial flexibility that a lot of people would like to have and often need to have, especially over the last 18 months, and we do that in a very responsible way.”

Like Afterpay, Beforepay says it is not covered by the National Credit Act. It charges only one fee – a 5 per cent transaction fee – but has no late fees or other costs for consumers.

More than 60 per cent of its customers also used other buy now, pay later providers and the company is developing ways to factor in their use of those other products to its consumer checks.

Jamie, who has also held roles at First State Investments and McKinsey & Co, said Beforepay had landed in the market at the perfect time.

“Customers are reaching a level of comfort with mobile devices and financial technology that make them open to an offering like this at present, and I think the maturity of what we’ve been able to build in terms of the quality of the technology and scalability would have been much harder five or 10 years ago,” Jamie said.

Source – AFR Natasha Gillezeau is a journalist for The Australian Financial Review based in the Sydney office.