Point-of-Sale Provider Ingenico Names Laurent Blanchard CEO

Payments terminal firm Ingenico has a new chief executive.

Laurent Blanchard, former chief operating officer of the POS platform company Cegid, will become Ingenico’s CEO on April 3, the company announced Tuesday (March 14).

“Laurent is an experienced global executive with an impressive 25-year track record in the technology sector, particularly in Europe and North America,” France-based Ingenico said in a news release.

“Throughout his career, Laurent has been an avid advocate for sustainability and technology as a catalyst for business innovation.”

In addition to Cegid, Blanchard has held senior leadership roles as companies that include IBM, HP, and Cisco, the release said. He replaces Gerrard Schmid and Rolf Stangl, who will step down as co-CEOs but remain members of Ingenico’s Supervisory Board.

Blanchard’s appointment follows a number of high profile partnerships for Ingenico, including a team-up with cryptocurrency giant Binance that was announced last month.

The two companies have joined forces on two projects to allow cryptocurrency payments in stores in France.

The first solution — in which merchants are paid in crypto — is being piloted at companies in France before rolling out in countries in Europe where Binance is regulated.

As PYMNTS reported, the two companies are also working on a crypto-to-fiat payment solution that is to be piloted in the second quarter, while Ingenico has said it also plans to include Binance on its payments platform as a service called PPaaS.

Earlier in February, Ingenico teamed up with the U.S. buy now, pay later (BNPL) firm Splitit to “bring one-touch, no-interest, buy now, pay later capability to the physical checkout experience.”

The two companies said they see their solution as a more frictionless way to access BNPL at the point of sale without having to rely on online applications.

Instead of issuing new debt, Splitit’s platform unlocks available credit on consumers’ credit cards, turning it into an interest-free installment-based BNPL loan. That means there’s no need for additional applications and credit checks, leading to a more seamless customer experience, the two companies said.

As PYMNTS noted recently, the partnership is an example of the cross-pollination of popular online payment methods happening as physical retailers see more traffic.

Discussing the trend with PYMNTS’ Karen Webster, Splitit CEO Nandan Sheth said the partnership with Ingenico is the result of merchant demand and his company’s exhaustive search for the appropriate partner.

“Some of the larger merchants that we’re in discussions with, and/or our merchants today using our service in eCommerce, many of them were asking, when are you going to launch an omnichannel solution,” Sheth said. “We see a fairly sizable opportunity at the point of sale.”