Green Dot hires former NetSpend boss Dan Henry as new CEO

Former NetSpend CEO Dan Henry has been named as the CEO of Green Dot, the Pasadena, Calif.-based prepaid card issuer and banking company announced Wednesday.

A longtime payments veteran with extensive experience in prepaid cards, Henry takes over leadership of Green Dot at a time when the company is trying to find its footing after a few volatile years in the leadership ranks. Co-founder Steve Streit stepped down from the CEO role in December.

Investor Starboard Value last month revealed it was buying a 9.3% stake in Green Dot, signaling potential leadership changes as well as speculation about future strategic moves. Another signal of coming change occurred this month when Jeffrey Osher, a shareholder who had been outspoken against previous leadership at Green Dot, was named to the company's board of directors.

It's been about four years since much of the in-fighting at Green Dot became apparent, as San Francisco hedge fund Harvest Capital sought to remove Streit from the company's board and the CEO role, citing poor financial performance. It essentially left Streit fighting for his position as company leader.

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With much of that firestorm behind Green Dot, Henry joins a company that has been looking beyond its prepaid card services and into digital channels and other means to get its products in the hands of consumers and businesses.

Henry, who became NetSpend's CEO in 2008 and left that position six years later, succeeds William I. Jacobs, who has held the interim CEO position at Green Dot since January.

Henry left NetSpend shortly after the company became part of the processor Total System Services. He left the company the same day in which TSYS CEO Philip W. Tomlinson also retired. NetSpend, a provider of prepaid services, was the first consumer-facing business for TSYS, which was purchased by Global Payments last year.

About a year after leaving NetSpend, Henry joined the board of directors for Clayton, Mo.-based payment processor Clearent.

“I am honored to join Green Dot and look forward to working with the company’s many talented team members to continue driving the mission of transforming the financial services industry through powerful partnerships and innovative products and services,” Henry said in a press release. “I see significant potential to build upon Green Dot’s solid foundation that combines its bank charter with its market-leading Banking as a Service FinTech platform.”

In 2010, Henry led NetSpend through its initial public offering, and in July 2013 completed an all-cash sale of the company to TSYS valued at $1.4 billion. Prior to NetSpend, Henry co-founded electronic financial transaction processor Euronet Worldwide.

He served as president and chief operations officer at Euronet until the end of 2006, and remained on its board until 2008.

For the past two years, Henry has been chairman of Paysign Inc., a provider of prepaid card programs, digital banking and processing services for corporate, consumer and government applications.

Since 2017, he also has been a director of The Brink’s Company, a provider of cash management, security and payment solutions.