April Grudier, VP Marketing & Partner Strategy, BlueSnap

Today we're delighted to speak with April Grudier, VP of Marketing and Partner Strategy at BlueSnap, the Boston-based global payment orchestration platform that became part of Payroc in October 2025. April spent the first half of her career in consumer marketing at BJ's Wholesale Club and Staples before payments appeared on her radar at all, and she reckons that B2C grounding is exactly what she brings to a technical, back-office industry. In this interview she discusses BlueSnap's intelligent payment routing, what life has been like since the Payroc deal closed, and why the constantly shifting regulatory goalposts are the one thing she'd change about the sector.

My questions are in bold - over to you April:

Who are you and what's your background?

I'm April Grudier, VP of Marketing and Partner Strategy at BlueSnap. I've been in marketing for a good two decades now, and it's taken me on a bit of a winding path. I started out on the retail side, first at BJ's Wholesale Club and then Staples, doing pretty traditional B2C brand marketing. Payments weren't even on my radar at that point.

That changed when I moved to Cayan, and then TSYS. I joined BlueSnap in 2019, first as Director of Global Partner Strategy, then moved into my current role the following year. So I've now spent about eight years properly immersed in payments and SaaS, on top of all those earlier years in B2C. It's a strange combination on paper, but it means I bring a real "customer experience first" lens to what can sometimes be a pretty technical, back-office industry.

I loved working in consumer marketing. It's exciting, fast-moving work. But retail can be a fickle business, and I found myself craving something with a bit more stability where I could grow my skills in a new direction. Fintech gave me that, while still letting me bring the customer-first instincts I'd built in B2C to a much more technical, back-office industry.

What is your job title and what are your general responsibilities?

I'm VP of Marketing and Partner Strategy at BlueSnap. In practice, that means I sit across two worlds: building and running our global marketing function, and shaping how we work with our partners and grow those relationships strategically.

I manage a team of six marketing associates, and my remit covers global marketing for BlueSnap, the Payroc POS team, and Dynamic Payments, our payments company in Puerto Rico. I split my time fairly evenly across three things: strategy, execution, and coaching and development. Developing my team and helping them grow in their careers matters just as much to me as any campaign we ship. Day to day, though, a huge chunk of my time goes to advocating: for my business unit, for the brand, and for our target market.

Can you give us an overview of your business?

At its core, BlueSnap is a global payment orchestration platform. We help businesses handle every part of their payments journey, whether that's running an e-commerce store, selling across borders, embedding payments into a SaaS platform, chasing down invoices, or managing subscription billing.

We focus on three main areas: embedded payments, cross-border payments, and accounts receivable. And we've deliberately built this as an all-in-one platform, so rather than juggling multiple providers, a business can do one integration and be set up to take payments across 200 geographies, in over 100 currencies and 100+ payment types. We also offer local acquiring in more than 47 countries, supporting local payment methods and multi-currency checkout as standard, so a payment can be processed as if it were made in that country, even if the customer's on the other side of the world.

The bit I'm particularly proud of is what sits behind all of this: our Intelligent Payment Routing technology. It recognises where a card was issued and automatically routes the payment to a local acquiring bank wherever it can. In practice, that gives businesses a safety net. If something goes wrong with a payment, it can be rerouted through another bank rather than the transaction simply failing.

Tell us how you are funded?

We're backed by private equity, with Great Hill Partners and Parthenon Capital Partners as our investors. And more recently, in October 2025, we became part of Payroc, a major payments platform and merchant acquirer, which has been a significant step for us.

What's it been like since BlueSnap became part of Payroc, and what do you enjoy most about the culture there?

Two things: the people, and the culture. Payments is a small world, and joining Payroc has meant reconnecting with a lot of people I knew back at Cayan and TSYS. And the culture itself has been a pleasant surprise; Jim and Adam Oberman (Payroc CEO and President) have been so accessible and approachable, which honestly isn't always a given with senior executives.

Payroc is remote-first, so for the first time I'm working from home almost entirely. It's actually made me more flexible. I can jump on calls with our teams in Israel, the UK/EU, and Australia much more easily. Payroc also genuinely advocates for work/life balance, which I appreciate. And best of all, I still get to work closely with my BlueSnap team day to day.

Who are your target customers? What's your revenue model?

We work with a real mix of B2B and B2C businesses selling internationally online, spanning industries like education, healthcare, retail, and manufacturing. We also spend a lot of time with software platforms and marketplaces that want to embed payments directly into their own products rather than bolt them on as an afterthought. On the revenue side, because of our diverse payment product portfolio, it's a blend of transaction-based and other revenue models rather than one single approach.

If you had a magic wand, what one thing would you change in the banking and/or FinTech sector?

I'd change how constantly the rules, regulations, and compliance requirements shift. It feels like the moment you've fully learned and understood a new regulation, something changes again.

What is your message for the larger players in the Financial Services marketplace?

My advice to anyone in financial services or tech, honestly, is: think like your target market. A lot of financial services players get, rightly, caught up in the strength of their technology. But you have to keep the end customer top of mind: what are they worried about, how do they actually talk about their challenges and needs? That's the best way to connect with them so they can understand what you offer and how it helps their business.

Where do you get your Financial Services/FinTech industry news from?

I get a lot of my industry news from Greg Myers' Leaders in Payments podcast, which always makes me feel current on the latest in payments. I'm also a regular reader of Finextra, for its great mix of news and insight across the entire financial system, and PaymentsJournal, which I rate highly for payment insights, data, and coverage of every payment type.

Can you list 3 people you rate from the FinTech and/or Financial Services sector that we should be following on LinkedIn, and why?

Three people I'd really recommend following are Daniel Webber, Chris Skinner, and Angela Strange. Daniel offers deep insights into cross-border payments and global money movement. Chris brings a genuinely global perspective on banking and payments. And Angela, who invests heavily in fintech, shares great long-term industry perspectives that are always worth a read.

Many thanks to April Grudier for taking the time to share her insights with FinTech Profile. You can learn more about BlueSnap on their website.