Fundtech Veterans Return With Otoma to Liberate Banks From Legacy Tech

NEW YORK, NY – April 21, 2026 – By Tyler Nguyen

A team of renowned figures from the last great payments technology shift has returned to the forefront, launching a new venture, Otoma, that aims to solve one of modern banking’s most persistent and costly problems. The company today unveiled an AI-native global payments infrastructure designed to free financial institutions from the grip of rigid legacy systems and vendor dependence.

Leading the charge are Peter Reynolds, appointed as Chief Executive Officer, and Reuven Ben Menachem, who will serve as Chairman. The names are well-known in fintech circles, as they were the architects behind Fundtech, a company that became a dominant force in global payments before being acquired by D+H for $1.25 billion in 2015. Their reunion under the Otoma banner signals a serious new attempt to revolutionize the payments landscape once again.

The Architects of an Era Return

The announcement is significant not just for the technology it promises, but for the credibility of the team behind it. Reuven Ben Menachem founded Fundtech in 1991, guiding it from a startup to a publicly traded powerhouse that defined an era of payments processing. Peter Reynolds, a fellow Fundtech alumnus, brings a wealth of experience from leadership roles across the fintech sector, including at ThetaRay and Earnix.

Their return addresses a challenge they’ve watched unfold for over a decade. "Over time, I have observed that payment systems often fall short of meeting banks' core needs and, in many cases, are absorbed into larger organizations, becoming the very legacy solutions they were meant to replace," said Peter Reynolds, CEO of Otoma. He emphasized the urgent need for a system that is easy to implement, leverages AI, and enables seamless global transactions, including for emerging asset classes like stablecoins.

This sentiment is echoed by his chairman. "My mission has always been to ensure that banks have cutting-edge payment infrastructures that help them maintain their leadership," stated Reuven Ben Menachem. "Watching the space evolve... has shown me that we still have a long way to go." By reassembling key members of the former Fundtech team, Otoma is making a bold statement: the people who built the last generation of payments infrastructure are back to build the next one.

Breaking the Chains of Legacy Systems

Otoma’s mission targets a deep-seated pain point for the banking industry: the staggering burden of legacy technology. For decades, banks have been shackled to monolithic, inflexible payment platforms that are expensive to maintain and slow to innovate. This isn't a minor inconvenience; it's a financial black hole. Industry analysis suggests that banks can spend up to 80% of their IT budgets simply on maintaining these outdated systems, leaving precious little for innovation and growth.

This technological debt has left banks vulnerable, allowing nimble fintech startups to rapidly capture market share by offering the seamless, real-time experiences that customers now demand. While banks have struggled with development cycles measured in months or years, competitors have been launching new features in weeks.

Otoma claims its platform can level the playing field. Described as a "Payments Tech Liberator," the company offers an AI-native infrastructure that can be delivered as a complete end-to-end system or as a development studio. At its core is a no-code Innovation Suite, featuring a Payments Visualizer for modeling workflows, continuous integrated testing to ensure stability, and an Any2Any data transformation engine to handle disparate data formats. The company asserts that this combination can slash development timelines from years to mere days, empowering banks to experiment and deploy new capabilities at the speed of the market.

Agility in the New Payments Battleground

The launch positions Otoma in a dynamic and increasingly competitive field. It’s not the only company aiming to solve the payments puzzle. Established giants like ACI Worldwide and cloud-native innovators like Volante Technologies are also providing modern solutions to help banks escape their legacy cages. The difference Otoma is banking on is its radical focus on AI-native architecture and a no-code environment that puts development power directly into the hands of the banks themselves, drastically reducing vendor dependence.

This push for agility comes at a critical time. The payments landscape is being reshaped by powerful new forces, most notably the rise of digital assets. Otoma's platform explicitly supports stablecoins, a nod to a market that has seen explosive growth, with annual transaction volumes recently soaring past $33 trillion—eclipsing the throughput of networks like PayPal many times over. By integrating stablecoin capabilities, Otoma is positioning its clients not just to solve today's problems but to compete in tomorrow's financial ecosystem, where the lines between traditional finance and digital currencies are rapidly blurring.

By enabling banks to create tailored workflows, custom reporting, and automated payment tools without massive, multi-year projects, the platform aims to turn banks from slow-moving incumbents into agile innovators. The ability to quickly and affordably test new ideas could become a crucial weapon in the battle for customer loyalty.

To anchor its global ambitions, Otoma has opened a new headquarters in New York, which will serve as a hub for development and customer engagement. The company is wasting no time making its presence felt, with plans to exhibit its new platform at the upcoming EBADay conference in Copenhagen this June, offering the industry a first-hand look at what it hopes will be the future of payments.