About Us

Danny Shader founded Handle Financial in 2009 after a long history of building innovative, high-growth companies. Prior to Handle Financial, he led Good Technology, Inc. a wireless software company that was acquired by Motorola in 2007. Before Good, Danny co-founded Accept.com, one of the first person-to-person payments providers, which Amazon acquired in 1999.

As CTO of Handle Financial, Kurt Thams ensures that our payment system is both innovative and reliable. He has architected and built numerous electronic payment systems at startups and for Fortune 500 companies. His works include systems for international money transfer, electronic checking, credit, and prepaid debit. As CISO, Kurt ensures our enterprise is secure. Handle Financial is an ISO 27001 organization, SSAE-18/SOC1 compliant, and meets the security and reliability requirements of multiple state and federal agencies.

Steve Capps is our chief innovator. As an expert in user interface design, he is relentless about making our products and services easy to use. He was a member of the original Macintosh team, key designer of Apple Newton, and an Apple Fellow. Steve is named on 65+ patents that span toys, musical instruments, hardware and software.

Mirna Daouk is our Chief Financial Officer. Prior to joining PayNearMe, she held multiple roles leadership at JPMorgan Chase including managing director and CFO of Business Banking, as well as concurrently the Mortgage Banking financial planning and analysis lead and Mortgage Banking Technology CFO.

Mirna holds an MS degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT, where she also completed PhD course and exam requirements, and received an MS-equivalent in Mechanical Engineering and a BS-equivalent in Mathematics and Physics from the Ecole Polytechnique in France.

John Minor leads the product and support teams at Handle Financial. Prior to Handle Financial, John managed network products for Jasper Wireless and worked at Motorola, where he helped the company launch its first Android phone. He began his career at Good Technology, where he served as director of technical account management and escalations.

Michael Tibbott leads the engineering team at Handle Financial, and was one of the company’s first developers. Michael has a track record of pushing the envelope. From GRiD (first laptop computer) to Apple’s Newton (helped define the PDA), Classifeds2000 (profitable e-commerce web site sold to Excite in 1998), and LivePlanet (integrating web, TV and reality with Project Greenlight), Michael is known for building and managing engineering teams that ship fast, reliable and accurate software.

Michael Kaplan leads Handle Financial’s merchant processing business (PayNearMe). Michael has over 20 years of experience in mobile and payments technology. Prior to Handle Financial, he led teams at Good Technology, Motorola, and most recently, Jasper Wireless, where he was responsible for strategic partnerships, solution engineering and carrier integrations globally.

Lauren Brown is Handle Financial’s Vice President of Legal. Prior to leading Handle Financial’s legal department, Lauren served as the company’s Associate General Counsel and Chief Regulatory Counsel, as well as AML Compliance Officer of the company’s licensed money transmitter subsidiary. In law school, Lauren completed an externship for the U.S. District Court’s Northern District of California and served as an Editor for the Santa Clara Law Review. She holds a JD from Santa Clara University School of Law and a BA from University of California at San Diego.