Thredd Names Mastercard Vet Marilyn McDonald New Tech Chief

Marilyn McDonald will join the company following senior positions that offered “global transformation experience” at the likes of Citigroup, Mastercard, Expedia and StubHub, Thredd said in a Monday (March 9) news release.

“Her focus is on strengthening operational readiness, bank-grade delivery, enterprise execution and continuous resilience as Thredd scales embedded finance programmes, alongside banks and credit unions worldwide,” the release said.

McDonald succeeds Edwin Poot, who helped modernize Thredd’s architecture and technology stack, setting the stage “for cloud-native and agentic growth,” the release said.

Thredd has also named Ryan Dew as its new chief product officer, a move the company says “further aligns product innovation with platform scale and enterprise execution.” Dew has been with Thredd since 2024, per his LinkedIn profile, and was previously the company’s head of product solutions.

“Thredd has never been in a better position than we are now,” said Jim McCarthy, the company’s chief executive. “With our cloud-native platform now live in America, credit launching shortly, along with modern debit and ledger capabilities, we are accelerating with confidence.”

PYMNTS spoke with Poot last year about the role of agentic artificial intelligence (AI) in the world of payments.

“I think what people usually tend to forget is … once this takes off and you’ll deploy agents per transaction, this will require changes to the infrastructure and the ways in which you manage those agents. People can underestimate that,” he said.

Poot also discussed the way the technology plays a role in Thredd’s efforts to provide fraud prevention and other security protocols for its clients. Adding agentic AI enhances this process by allowing for a more nuanced understanding of transaction intent, lessening the need to block transactions unless necessary.

“Agent technology will be everywhere,” Poot predicted.

More recently, PYMNTS interviewed Thredd’s McCarthy about the pressures banks face to offer alternative credit experiences amid increased competition from FinTechs.

While the biggest banks can afford to experiment, the thousands of smaller institutions around the United States are facing a much more difficult task, McCarthy said. They notice what digital-only providers like Chime can offer, yet many are hindered by outdated systems and organizational silos.

Smaller lenders are often “still stuck just trying to get Apple Pay out the door,” McCarthy told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster.