Forage, which allows merchants to accept EBT payments online, announced today that Ofek Lavian has joined the company as chief operating officer.
At Forage, Lavian will oversee the day-to-day operations, leading and scaling teams including product, operations, and partnerships. Lavian’s experience building out teams and products from inception to scale will be key to Forage’s mission of democratizing access to government benefits, says the company. That, combined with his years of experience working in high-growth environments and marketplace businesses, makes him uniquely qualified to accelerate Forage’s growth trajectory.
Prior to joining Forage, Lavian led the payments and commerce product teams at Instacart where he built the company’s core payments infrastructure and launched multiple products that drove billions in incremental impact during Instacart's peak growth years. These include launching new payment methods such as EBT/SNAP (food stamps) and PayPal, Instacart Gift Cards, Prepaid Cards, Stored Value, and a Co-Branded Credit Card with Chase (launching later this year).
“Ofek is one of the most knowledgeable payments experts in Silicon Valley – what he accomplished in two years at Instacart transformed the entire payments side of their business,” said Justin Intal, CEO and co-founder of Forage. “We are beyond excited for him to join our executive team and accelerate our timeline to help grocers and merchants of all sizes accept EBT payments online. Ofek is joining us at a very critical period in Forage’s growth, and his expertise in the payments space from working at tech leaders like Instacart and Uber will help fast track our product development and partnership plans.”
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