Allstar Business Solutions has strengthened its leadership team with two senior management hires.
Thore Vestergaard joins as senior vice president and managing director, Commercial Cards, Europe and Allister Mitchell as vice-president, Core Products. Both will report to Alan King, group president, Fleetcor UK and Australasia.
The new appointments will apply more than 40 years of experience in commercial cards, banking and B2B payments to advance the business’s core fuel and payments propositions, and support further expansion into broader expense management solutions for SMEs and corporates.
Vestergaard joins Allstar from Mastercard, where he most recently served as MD, Prepaid Management Services, EMEAA, having previously held a variety of positions including global commercial product head and product and marketing head, also in the Prepaid Management Services division.
Prior to joining Mastercard, he spent eight years working in senior positions within the Global Transactional Services Division at Citi both in London and Singapore, including as wholesale cards head for Asia Pacific. He also worked at Visa for more than 11 years in senior positions including head of commercial and government solutions in the CEMEA region.
Throughout his career, he has been focused on driving innovation in B2B payments, helping companies and the public sector replace inefficient payment flows with electronic alternatives that drive cost savings, greater transparency and better controls. Allstar said his experience will be highly valuable as it broadens and diversifies beyond the fuel card market to support its existing customers with additional products and services.
He said: “Allstar has a heritage of delivering market leading payment and technology solutions that add real value to our customers’ businesses, providing them with cost savings, enhanced controls and greater spend insights.
“As the payments and economic landscape evolves, Allstar is ideally positioned to capture additional growth opportunities through further product diversification and the launch of innovative electronic payments solutions for SMEs.”
Mitchell has a 17-year track record in commercial cards and B2B payments, including previous roles at Lloyds Banking Group, MasterCard, NatWest Bank and Ulster Bank, both in the UK and across international markets.
He joins Allstar from Lloyds, where he spent seven years as head of products (Corporate, Commercial & Virtual Payments). He was instrumental in repositioning Lloyds’ commercial payments capabilities and driving the bank’s B2B payments strategy transformation, which included the launch of new products underpinned by innovative digital and mobile servicing infrastructure.
He also prototyped and trialled a new mobile fuel payment proposition with the bank’s leasing division, Lex Autolease.
Mitchell’s focus at Allstar will be on enhancing its market leading fuel card products, improving the customer experience and ensuring the business continues to innovate as the market evolves.
He said: “Allstar is a dynamic and progressive next generation payments company that continues to expand and drive change in the payments sector. This new role presents new and exciting opportunities to increase the range of products that can be offered to customers to simplify their business and increase efficiency.”
The appointments come after the business announced the launch of the Allstar Plus Visa Card, a new payment card that aims to offer UK SMEs both control and flexibility for fuel and other vehicle, travel and business-related spending.
The contactless-enabled card offers all the benefits of the Allstar Fuel Card Network, the largest fuel card network in the country with 95% coverage, with controlled access to the Visa payment network to allow companies to pay for other targeted business expenses.
King said: “We’re delighted to welcome Allister and Thore to Allstar. Their extensive experience in leading the growth and development of B2B payment solutions across the UK and international markets will help us drive continued leadership; not only in fuel cards but across other corporate payments categories, allowing us to better serve SMEs and large companies alike.”
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