April Mellas and Mallory Milestone join GrailPay as Chief Revenue Officer and Chief of Staff

As bank payments get faster, the security check has to happen earlier. To bring GrailPay to more of the institutions that need that check, we've added two leaders to our team: April Mellas as Chief Revenue Officer and Mallory Milestone as Chief of Staff.

April will expand our reach to the institutions that move money every day, and Mallory will grow the data partnerships that strengthen every risk score we deliver. Both join as we scale following our $10.5 million Series A, led by MissionOG.

"Instant payments are quickly becoming the default, and every institution moving money needs to know who is on the other side of a transaction before the funds leave the account," said Will Messina, Co-founder and CEO of GrailPay. "We've built a network that answers that question for more than 99% of US bank accounts, and now we're bringing it to every bank and platform ready to move fast and stay safe. April helped scale a fintech past a billion-dollar valuation by earning the trust of the institutions she sells to, and Mallory brings the strategic range to expand the data behind every account check and payment score, which makes them exactly the right leaders for this next stage."

Meet April Mellas, Chief Revenue Officer

As CRO, April leads revenue strategy, sales, business development, partnerships, and go-to-market, building the sales organization that brings GrailPay to more banks, credit unions, fintechs, and payment processors. She joins us from Vestwell, a CNBC Top 50 Fintech company, where she spent nearly five years as a senior sales leader and helped scale the business past a $1 billion valuation.

April was named one of Parity's 100 Women in Fintech 2026, in partnership with LSEG, and was named an Inspiring Fintech Female by NYC Fintech Women in 2024. She was also honored at the New York Stock Exchange for her work advancing women across the fintech industry and selected as a key executive for the inaugural RiseUp Executive Summit, taking place at Money20/20 USA 2026 in Las Vegas.

"What I noticed right away at GrailPay is how quickly a first conversation turns into a much bigger one," said April. "We're a risk and data layer, so we're not telling a bank or a fintech what their risk tolerance should be. We give them the signals before the money moves so they can make that call themselves. Once they see what the data can do in one part of their business, they start asking where else we can help. That's the kind of momentum every sales leader hopes to walk into, and my focus now is building a team that can keep up with it."

Meet Mallory Milestone, Chief of Staff

The more data our network holds, the more precisely we can verify the account behind every payment. As Chief of Staff, Mallory leads the data partnerships that deepen that network. She joins us from Boston Consulting Group, where she spent four years advising companies on growth and transformation, advancing from Associate to Consultant and spending a year in the firm's Johannesburg office.

"Working across various geographies, industries, and clients as a consultant taught me how to arrive somewhere new and make an impact quickly, and there is no better place to put that into practice than GrailPay," said Mallory. "Instant settlement, agentic payments, and stablecoins are rewriting how capital moves, and because there is no playbook for this shift yet, it is exactly the kind of challenge I love. Data is the backbone of what GrailPay does, and I am focused on building the partnerships that give our customers the fullest picture of every payment."

Building trust into every bank payment

Bank payments that once took days to settle now move in seconds, and real-time payments are projected to become a nearly $500 billion global market by 2034, according to Fortune Business Insights. As settlement becomes instant, the security check must happen before the money moves, and that's the moment GrailPay was built for. Before a payment is sent, we check whether the bank account is real, whether it belongs to the person or business on the other side of the transaction, and whether the payment is likely to clear. Where the risk score supports it, we guarantee the payment.

Where we are today

We've grown to billions in annualized payment volume while doubling quarter over quarter, with zero customer churn to date and customers growing their spend by more than 200% on average in their first year. Our Series A funds two priorities: expanding our data network and scaling our go-to-market, and April and Mallory will lead that work.

We're also hiring across several key roles. If you want to help build what's next, see our open roles at www.grailpay.com/career/grailpay-team.