Fivestars Strengthens Executive Management Team with Fintech and Operations Veteran Hires, Ralph L. Leung and David King

Fivestars, one of America’s largest local commerce platform, today announced the addition of two key members to its executive team to help the company scale its all-in-one payments and marketing platform for local small businesses.  

Ralph L. Leung joins Fivestars as Chief Financial Officer, overseeing all aspects of the company’s finance and accounting function, as well as business applications and operations, IT and facilities. In this role, Leung will leverage his 20 plus years of experience across strategic finance, investment banking and corporate strategy to scale Fivestars’ offering and optimize the company’s resources against revenue and growth objectives.  

Prior to Fivestars, Leung was Chief Financial Officer at Jyve Corporation, a tech-enabled labor marketplace that powers a scalable workforce for large consumer goods brands. Earlier in his career, Leung was a senior technology and fintech investment banker at Morgan Stanley where he advised Global 500 companies on mission-critical strategic initiatives such as IPOs, M&A and capital raises, including working closely with senior leadership at Alibaba Group, BlackRock, IntercontinentalExchange and Visa. Over the course of his career, Leung has successfully helped companies scale, transform and exit; completing over 50 strategic transactions for over $90 billion of M&A value and raised over $60 billion of capital.

“Fivestars’ integrated payments and marketing solution enables merchants to engage with its growing network of over 60 million consumers and automate their customer acquisition and retention activities that ultimately drive their businesses,” Leung said. “My objective is to accelerate the scaling of these activities on our network. Fivestars has the right product, innovative technology, and a seasoned and passionate team, to help the millions of local businesses increase sales and truly thrive.”

David King joins as Vice President of Operations, after four years at Cass Information Systems as Vice President and General Manager. Over the last 20 years, King has been responsible for overseeing operational growth and has a track-record for scaling contact center operations and managing teams with up to 4,500 team members located across multiple time zones and countries. At Fivestars, King oversees the company’s core customer-facing and support functions and is leveraging his Green Belt in Six Sigma methodologies to establish repeatable and scalable processes to optimize the customers’ experience. 

King remarks, “I’m excited to join such a strongly positioned company focused on delivering value through every interaction for small and mid-sized businesses in a way that will allow them to be successful in today’s ever changing business environment.”  

“Local businesses are as essential to our national wellbeing as ever before, but they have been embattled from multiple fronts long before even COVID-19. Payments is one of those key areas, where large institutions skim thousands of dollars in revenue right off the top without providing any value to the merchant in return,” said Fivestars’ Chief Executive Officer Victor Ho. “We are flipping this paradigm by turning payments into a mechanism for local businesses to gain control over their customer bases, without costing them an additional dime. Now, with Ralph and David’s deep experience, we can accelerate our impact beyond anything before. Even more than the significant talent that Ralph and David bring, I’m most grateful to be gaining two new teammates who have a genuine heart for service and are fired up to fight for Main Street America. The chapter ahead is incredibly exciting.”

To learn more about joining Fivestars’ team visit https://www.fivestars.com/about-us/.

About Fivestars
Fivestars is one of America’s largest local commerce platforms driving over $3 billion of commerce and 100 million transactions annually. Founded in 2010 by former McKinsey analysts Victor Ho and Matt Doka, the company’s mission is to help local businesses turn every transaction into a relationship. The company offers a robust payment and customer loyalty platform, enabling local businesses to increase customer retention, driving sales. 

For more information visit: www.fivestars.com.
 

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