KAST Selects Stripe’s Connor Fitzgerald as U.S. General Manager

We’ve appointed Connor Fitzgerald as KAST’s U.S. General Manager to lead our growth in the world’s largest financial market.

His priorities will include scaling the core platform, launching KAST Business, building the local team, and bringing our next products to market.

Connor’s appointment follows our record $80 million Series A funding round and comes as we strengthen our presence across North America, Latin America, and the Middle East. We now have about 250 full-time employees across engineering, product, and compliance, serve more than one million users, and process roughly $5 billion in annualized transaction volume.

We’re excited to have Connor as part of our exceptional KAST team to scale in the world’s biggest financial market. He brings deep experience from a variety of fintechs and knows how to dig in and drive growth

said KAST Founder and CEO Raagulan Pathy.

Leading the Next Phase of U.S. Growth

Stablecoins are becoming a real foundation for modern finance, making it possible to move value globally, quickly, and with clear settlement.

Connor’s background sits at the intersection of what we’re building: consumer finance, payments partnerships, and digital asset infrastructure. He has spent more than a decade building financial products and partnerships across fintech, payments, and digital assets, with a track record of taking new programs from zero to meaningful scale.

In the U.S., Connor will focus on the core areas that determine whether a financial platform can scale reliably:

• Scaling the core platform for U.S. customers and partners
• Launching KAST Business for companies that need stablecoin-native finance
• Building the local team across key functions
• Advancing the next wave of consumer and business products in the U.S.

His appointment is part of our broader push to grow in the U.S., expand our product offering, and invest in the infrastructure and capabilities required to build a compliant, durable platform.

A Track Record Across Fintech and Stablecoins

Connor began his fintech career at Tilt, a social payments platform acquired by Airbnb in 2017. He later joined Dave as employee No. 15, where he built the partnerships function and helped scale the company from Series A through its 2022 public listing.

Connor then led business development and product strategy at Coinstar, launching the company’s first off-kiosk fintech products, including a crypto wallet enabling cash-to-crypto conversion and a prepaid card.

Most recently, Connor served as Head of Partnerships, Cards at Bridge, now part of Stripe. There, he helped build a global stablecoin card program from the ground up, including:

• Establishing bank, network, and developer partnerships
• Expanding the platform to more than 100 markets
• Helping operationalize Bridge’s first U.S. stablecoin settlement flow
• Scaling annualized payment volume from zero to tens of millions of dollars

Connor said KAST’s commitment to building for the long term was a key reason he joined:

“Stablecoins force you to rebuild finance from first principles. That’s why KAST caught my attention. What stood out was the company’s willingness to invest early in the hard things such as licensing, compliance, real infrastructure, and greater ownership of the underlying rails. The company’s momentum speaks for itself.”

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