Fintech Hello Clever has appointed former Bolt boss Justin Grooms as its president.
Grooms joins the real-time payments startup to accelerate it US expansion and builds the “first truly AI-powered, agent-first consumer payments experience”.
During his time as president and CEO of the US one-click checkout company, Grooms grew Bolt’s North American shopper network from five million to more than 85 million accounts, launched Bolt Checkout 2.0 and Bolt ID.
Founded in 2021 by Caroline Tran and Gavin Nguyen, Hello Clever connects merchants and platforms directly to local payment rails.
“Justin has done the rare thing of scaling a consumer-payments network into the tens of millions, and he understands both the technology and the markets we’re moving into,” Tran said.
“He shares the agent-first future we’re building toward, and he knows how to turn that vision into revenue and reach.
“As we expand across the US and beyond, he’s the best person to lead the company into its next phase of growth and to help us show that real-time, intelligent payments can become the global standard.”
The Sydney startup initially connected businesses directly to local payment networks, helping money move instantly, settle cleanly and become easier to track. Now the platform combines real-time payments, built-in loyalty features and AI-powered insights.
Grooms said his job is to build an agent-first experience on top of that infrastructure and take it to consumers and merchants at scale.
“The rails behind payments have finally matured in the US, but the experience built on top of them hasn’t kept pace,” he said.
“The real-time infrastructure is now in place. What’s missing is the intelligent layer that sits between a customer and their money, and that’s the gap I came to Hello Clever to close.”
