Pro-freedom Amazon competitor PublicSquare has hired Brian Billingsley in a leadership role to, as Billigsley put it in a post on X, “help build the payments infrastructure for the parallel economy” – also known as uncancelable payments.
Previously, Billigsley co-founded a payments stacks company Basis Theory, and was CEO of the US branch of Klarna – a Swedish firm in the “buy now, pay later” short-term financing business.
PublicSquare announced that he will now head the newly set up PSQ Payments Subsidiary. The marketplace, which describes itself as a choice of patriotic merchants and customers, aims to differentiate from Amazon with its focus on freedom.
In particular, according to an earlier blog post, the company’s goal is to distinguish itself from the corporate mainstream industry and its progressive agenda and instead “promote the constitutional values this nation was founded on.”
Now the new subsidiary headed by Billigsley will add building and scaling payments to the company’s portfolio, specifically the uncancelable kind – to be used by PublicSquare, but also third parties who support the parallel economy concept.
PublicSquare CEO Michael Seifert welcomed Billigsley as a highly valuable addition, thanks to his experience, knowledge, and reputation, adding that the new payments system is another element necessary to create and own the infrastructure underpinning the parallel economy.
“Combined with the power of our Credova subsidiary, PSQ Payments will position us to monetize our marketplace transactions further, provide what we expect to be a best-of-breed checkout experience, and protect our merchants and customers from cancellation,” commented Seifert.
In a blog post, Billigsley said that by joining PublicSquare, he is able to harmonize his passion for fintech with what he said is his moral compass.
He remarked that the fintech sector has many companies that are following the “liberal and progressive” ideologies championed by tech firms in general.
Billigsley mentions examples of organizers of events and meetings not allowing him to attend because he decided not to receive the Covid vaccine, as well as those hoping to participate being unable to register unless they agreed to use pronouns to identify themselves.
PublicSquare says its primary mission is to help consumers “shop their values” and “put purpose behind their purchases.” Some high-profile supporters include Congressman Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump, Jr., and Tucker Carlson.
