Team, History, and
Philosophy

OUR TEAM

Phoenix Managed Networks' senior team is made up of professionals who have held executive management positions with some of the world's most prestigious payment companies, including Transaction Network Services, PaylinX, Cybersource, VISA, EDS, ExaDigm, FrontStream Payments, Cogent Communications, and Raytheon.

Many of us have worked together at various points in our careers and enjoy collaborating at every level of our company. As seasoned veterans in the payments industry, we've combined our friendship with our experience building superior payment management platforms — and we run Phoenix Managed Networks with energy, attention to detail, and respect for the staff and clients who make it possible.

Following the merger with Wink, we are now part of a groundbreaking combined entity that brings the best of Phoenix’s infrastructure and Wink’s innovative biometric and AI-powered payment solutions. This new chapter allows us to offer an even more comprehensive, secure, and scalable payments experience for businesses of all sizes.

Our front-line staff is a close-knit team of network techs operating from our 24/7 Network Operations Center in Phoenix, Arizona. The network surveillance team is cross-trained and co-resident with our senior engineering staff. This enables us to work closely on every project so we're always on the same page.

Our software development team is U.S. based and serves as product experts and solution architects in addition to writing and testing our code. The development team consults directly with clients, working hand in hand on requirements, user experience, and building value into every instance of our gateway. We adhere to the best parts of Agile methodology, from story to daily standup.

Our leadership team, staff members, and board of directors are all career veterans of our industry. Each one is dedicated to our goal at Phoenix: to provide unparalleled, cost-effective payment gateway and secure communications solutions to our clients—now enhanced through the innovation and expanded capabilities brought by Wink.

Matthew Mudd

President and Chief Executive Officer

Matthew Mudd is responsible for the corporate and technical operation of the company. He was appointed CEO by the Board of Directors in October 2013. Before this, he was the COO — a position he held since Phoenix Managed Networks's inception in 2009.

Before joining Phoenix Managed Networks, Matt was a founding management team member at Transaction Network Services, where he worked for 19 years. During this time he held various roles: in NOC management, as Vice-President of Operations; in Development, as Senior VP of POS Engineering; and in Product, as Executive Vice President of Technology and Product Development. Matt has also worked as Chief Information Officer at PaylinX before it was acquired by CyberSource, and Director of Long-Haul Fiber Networking at Cogent Communications.

Matt holds an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and a Master's degree in American History.

Trevor Fall

Executive Vice-President, Global Sales

Trevor Fall is responsible for leading all aspects of the company’s revenue, including the retention and growth of current customers and new sales. With experience across the payment industry, Trevor has successfully built sales teams that have penetrated key markets with existing and new products that help customers achieve their business goals.

Trevor served in the United States Marine Corps, and before joining Phoenix Managed Networks, he was SVP-Sales of POS terminal manufacturer ExaDigm and Senior Vice President-North American Sales at Transaction Network Services. In addition, Trevor has led sales for ATM placement and processing throughout North America as Vice President-Sales at EDS Consumer Network Services.

Beth Crawford

Chief Financial Officer and Secretary/Treasurer to the Board of Directors.

Beth Crawford is responsible for the financial health of the company. Beth oversees Phoenix Managed Networks' accounting and financial reporting and works closely with the Board of Directors, where she serves as Treasurer and Secretary.

Before joining Phoenix Managed Networks in 2017, Beth held a range of senior financial positions in a wide variety of environments, including international non-governmental organizations, national consulting firms, and both publicly and privately held entities, including Transaction Network Services.

Beth has a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from Strayer University-Maryland and is also a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) licensed in the State of Virginia and a Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA).

John J. McDonnell, III

Chief Strategy Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors.

John McDonnell is responsible for formulating, facilitating and communicating the company's corporate strategy and goals. He also sits on Phoenix Managed Networks's Board of Directors, where he is the chairman.

Before joining Phoenix Managed Networks in 2022, John spent 25+ years driving global expansion for publicly traded, start-up and growth-stage technology companies in the FinTech industry, including Visa, CyberSource, Bitnet, Uphold and Transaction Network Services (TNS).

During his career, John has held a wide range of senior executive roles in corporate, business development, legal and regulatory roles.

John has a Bachelor of Arts (honors) in International Relations from Stanford University and Juris Doctorate in Law from UCLA.

Dan Sullivan

Vice-President of Network Engineering and Chief Security Officer

Dan Sullivan is responsible for the company’s network Engineering and enterprise-wide security. He is professionally certified in network design, security and computer science, holding a degree in Network Design and various industry certifications, including CCNP, MSCE, CNE. Dan has also been awarded CISSP and IS Security Certifications by Villanova University.

Before joining Phoenix Managed Networks, Dan worked as Director of Engineering for HBNet, where he and his team designed and implemented the core network Phoenix operates today. Dan has also worked in various engineering management positions at Raytheon, Memorex/Telex and Decision1 and served as a collegiate-level instructor in computer science, CCNA and CCNP.

Josh Hubert

Chief Software Architect

Josh Hulbert is responsible for the company’s software architecture and development. He joined Phoenix Managed Networks in January 2011 and is always looking for creative ways to address complex problems and add value for Phoenix and its customers.

Before joining Phoenix Managed Networks, Josh served in multiple technical roles within state and local government, including system administration, software development and DevOps. He has also served as the Vice President of Technology for multiple ISOs, where he designed and implemented their custom payment gateway back-office solutions.

Josh is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional. He also holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Mathematics from St. Martin's University, alongside multiple Microsoft certifications.

Fernando Villate

Vice-President, Operations

Fernando Villate is responsible for the company’s Network and Gateway Operations and our 24x7x365 Network Operations Center (NOC) in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the ultimate owner of our service quality, and coordinates all moves, adds and changes to network elements and services worldwide.

Before taking over Operations, Fernando was Director of Engineering for Phoenix Managed Networks, transitioning from Hypercom on day one. Before PMN, Fernando was Senior Design Engineer and Network Architect at HBNet, and a System Integration Engineer providing support for Hypercom clients around the globe.

Fernando has a Bachelor in Electromechanical Engineering from Fundacion Universitaria CIDCA in his native Colombia..

OUR HISTORY

Phoenix Managed Networks (PMN) was founded in 2009 as a joint venture between Jack McDonnell, the founder of Transaction Network Services, and Hypercom Corporation, a pioneer in payment technology and the developer of our payment-networking platform.

Our team of payment professionals created Phoenix with the goal of giving customers a range of streamlined, cost-effective payment gateway, management, and communication services that can be customized to their needs. Most of us have worked together before, at various stages of our careers in payments. Our watchword is "flexible," and we're passionate about our flexibility. It enables us to better serve our clients in all payment processing scenarios. In a business dominated by too many set-in-their-ways service providers, we're proudly dedicated to keeping things simple, flexible, affordable, and reliable for our customers.

In 2011, we acquired Hypercom's share of PMN. Since then, we've continued to expand our services internationally, providing payment gateway solutions, communications services, and managed security tools to businesses throughout North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region.

Our service began with a North American dial access network and quickly expanded to serve clients in the UK and Europe. Today's dial network receives and handles millions of transactions from points of service all over the globe each day, including credit, debit, ATM, subscription, licensing and medical device transactions.

As point of service communications options expanded, we added support for SSL, IP-Sec, and wireless transactions at scale.

With PhoenixPoint, we extended our management to a full range of devices at the point of service, allowing us to bridge legacy devices to utilize faster, more secure, and more reliable delivery across our advanced IP networks.

And as card-not-present (CNP) transactions became increasingly prevalent, we released PhoenixGate, a customizable payment gateway software stack. Explicitly designed for merchant service providers (MSPs), PhoenixGate is our flagship technology solution for MSPs looking to own a true omni-commerce platform.

Now, as part of Wink, we are pioneering the next generation of payments, combining Phoenix's trusted infrastructure with Wink’s cutting-edge biometric authentication and AI-powered solutions. Together, we are reshaping the future of payment solutions to deliver more secure, seamless, and scalable experiences across all platforms.

OUR PHILOSOPHY

Do One Thing, and Do It Well

We never leverage or compromise our resources or networking infrastructure to suit markets with different business/tech requirements. We focus on our customers and their specific needs. We don't spread ourselves too thin.
We never compete with our payment processor or payment service provider clients. Instead, we provide them with the industry's best technologies to support their success in the market. We bring our customers trusted, secure, streamlined, cost-effective payment communications and gateway services. We want our name to matter to you, and yours to your merchants. Not the other way around.
We invest in our people and recruit dynamic people at every level. Once they join Phoenix Managed Networks, we provide our staff with the best training tools and the best, most up-to-date technology solutions available.

Reinvent The Wheel Only When You Must

Phoenix Managed Networks partners with only top-quality technology suppliers dedicated to enhancing and augmenting our service offerings.

Our PhoeniXAccess service platforms are collocated or hosted in the highest-grade, most secure facilities available. These facilities are designed to provide the best neutral interconnect, resilient power, cooling, and security operations on the market. Our PhoeniXGate platforms are diversely cloud-hosted by industry leaders such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS). These partners provide the on-demand virtual server and elastic database capacity our clients require to meet sometimes exponentially growing throughput demands.

Our access network providers are the most respected in the industry, with a reputation for business stability and unparalleled network engineering and operations.

Our data backbone network partners give us the flexibility of high-capacity, burstable operations, plus the tools necessary to monitor and manage our connections quickly and effectively.

Quality, Security, and Diversity Are Not Commodity Businesses

Working with talented vendors allows Phoenix the freedom to focus on the essential components of secure networking. Clients consistently remark on improved performance, reliability, and security when moving to the Phoenix network, along with the accessibility and commitment of our technical experts.

While we are PCI-certified as a network provider, we go well beyond the standard, encrypting every transaction from receipt in our PCI-certified centers through final delivery to our client processing endpoints.

Reliable networking and payment gateway technology applications are not "we do that too" applications for one of many market segments. We serve merchant service providers; at Phoenix Managed Networks, it is our company's sole focus.

And with reliable networking, quality service, flexible tools, and knowledgeable support, we can help you take your business to the next level of success.