Effective immediately, Paul Fiore becomes the new CEO of Tabbedout, a mobile payment startup targeting the hospitality industry. Fiore has over 20 years of executive leadership experience in technology and finance services industries. Before he was taken in by Tabbedout, he worked as a general manager of bank products for prepaid financial services company Green Dot, vice president of strategy for XP Systems, and CFO for AT&T Employees Federal Credit Union. Fiore also co-founded and was CEO of banking software provider Digital Insight, which was later acquired by Intuit for $1.35 billion in 2007.  With Fiore’s leadership, the company hopes to expand Tabbedout’s merchant base.

Connecting restaurant tabs and smartphones

Tabbedout is a free mobile payment application that allows consumers to open, view and pay a bar or restaurant in real time directly from their phone. It runs on iOS and Android platforms, allowing the company to reach more than 400 partners in 31 states. The application integrates directly with the merchant’s point-of-sale (POS) system (now with 8 partners and access to 80% of the full-service market), no additional hardware or software required, streamlining the adoption of the mobile payment solution on the retail and consumer ends.

“We’re thrilled to have someone of Paul’s caliber and experience join our team,” said Rick Orr, Tabbedout co-founder and executive vice president. “The Board and I were determined to find a great and proven leader to really capitalize on what we’ve built. Paul brings both powerful market perspective and an amazing track record to our team and Board.”

“With his background in financial services and technology, Paul has a unique combination of skills that will help propel Tabbedout through its next stage of growth,” said Scott Sandell, NEA general partner and Tabbedout board member. “He has demonstrated a keen ability to identify the core strengths of a company and execute a long-term, strategic plan to seize new opportunities.”

Growth deems new leadership

The company has grown a great deal since its beginnings in 2009. Tabbedout enables users to “store credit or debit card information directly on their phone, encrypted and under passphrase protection, instead of on host servers or in ‘the cloud’ where the most public data breaches have occurred.” It ensures consumers are away from the perils of stolen identity that results from lost or forgotten credit cards, as they can now pay tabs directly from their phone. The app also allows one to interact with friends, “checking-in” to venues via Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.

“I am excited to join Tabbedout at such a pivotal time in its history,” said Fiore. “The mobile payments industry is similar in many ways to the Internet software sector in the mid-1990s: vast opportunity, dramatic growth in technical capability and consumer adoption. The ultimate winners had the right product at the right time, a solid team, investors that added value, a sustainable business model and a well-thought out partnership strategy. I believe Tabbedout has all of these ingredients.”

Tabbedout was funded with $2 million in an angel round in 2010. Here’s our earlier review that looks at Tabbedout’s beginnings, their focus and goals.

Mobile payments goes niche

In other mobile payments news, HelloWallet gets $12 million funding for mobile payment in a round led by Morningstar Inc. and TD Fund. Startup Shopkick also announced that they have great momentum in 2011 as consumers are geared more and more towards mobile shopping. With mobile shopping and payment kicking in, titan Paypal preps for a mobile expansion of its own.