Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 30, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- FreedomPay, a leading execution layer for autonomous payments and commerce operating in over 80 countries, today announces the appointment of two senior leaders to its growing executive team: Mike Farrell as Senior Vice President of Global Enterprise Accounts, and David Mathena as Senior Vice President of Engineering.

Together, these appointments underscore FreedomPay’s continued commitment to scaling its global enterprise offering, strengthening the execution layer that powers the world’s most complex payment environments, and accelerating an AI-native transition across how the company builds, operates, and innovates.

Mike Farrell, SVP Global Enterprise Accounts

Mike brings over 15 years of payments and financial services leadership to FreedomPay, joining from Subway where he served as Head of Global Payments and Fraud Prevention. During his time there he oversaw payment operations and fraud strategy for almost 29,000 locations across 15 countries.

“Mike is exactly the kind of leader who drives meaningful growth within global enterprise accounts,” said Chris Kronenthal, President at FreedomPay. 'He has lived on the merchant side of the table - building payment programs at global scale, navigating complexity across markets, and demanding the very best from his partners. He knows what enterprise merchants need because he has been one of our most sophisticated customers. That perspective is invaluable as we continue to grow our global enterprise business.'

'As a Global Enterprise merchant, I was able to see firsthand how powerful FreedomPay's offering could be: true global scale, multi-acquiring capability and a fully resilient architecture made them best in class,' said Mike Farrell, SVP Global Enterprise Accounts at FreedomPay. 'I am excited to join the great team here at FreedomPay to continue to help other enterprise merchants remove the increasing complexity that payments presents with the world's largest independent payment gateway.'

David Mathena, SVP Engineering

David brings over 20 years of experience building and scaling large financial technology platforms to FreedomPay. He joins from Priority Technology Holdings where he served as EVP of Engineering. During his tenure he helped grow the company from a small independent sales organization into a publicly traded global fintech platform, leading a distributed engineering team of 200+ engineers. At FreedomPay, David will help accelerate an AI-native transition by driving development efficiency, streamlining organizational operations, and embedding AI capabilities across FreedomPay’s products and services.

'David brings a rare combination of technical depth, organizational scale, and the pragmatism required to operationalize AI across an enterprise,' said Chris Kronenthal, President at FreedomPay. 'He has built and led engineering teams through every stage of growth with an unwavering focus on reliability, modernization, and innovation - from early-stage build-outs to multi-billion-dollar platforms. As we accelerate an AI-native transition to help our teams build faster and smarter, and to embed AI into the products and services our merchants rely on, David’s leadership will be invaluable.'

“Having spent my career building and scaling payment platforms, I understand the technical complexity that comes with operating at true global enterprise scale,” says David Mathena, SVP Engineering at FreedomPay. “FreedomPay has built something truly exceptional – a resilient, high-performance execution layer that the world’s leading merchants depend on. I’m excited to join the team to help accelerate our AI-native transition by improving development efficiency, enabling smarter operations across the organization, and embedding AI capabilities into the products and services we deliver.”

About FreedomPay 

FreedomPay is a leading execution layer for autonomous payments and commerce—transforming the way businesses power payments and experiences across the world. Operating in over 80 countries, FreedomPay is more than a payment solution: it is a world-class independent payment gateway engineered to simplify complexity, break down the barriers of legacy systems, and revolutionize every point of interaction—whether in-store, online, or mobile. Chosen by the leading brands across retail, hospitality, sports and entertainment, food service, healthcare and higher education, FreedomPay delivers technology strength, integration breadth, and deep expertise in global payments innovation.

As one of the first solutions in North America validated by the PCI Security Standards Council for P2PE, FreedomPay sets the gold standard for payment security, trust, and performance. With a unified technology stack, lightning-fast APIs, and integrated solutions across payments, FreedomPay gives businesses total peace of mind plus the freedom to choose any hardware provider. Move faster, act smarter, and lead markets—not chase them. www.freedompay.com

Burson for FreedomPay freedompayglobal@bursonglobal.com