Catherine Birkett

Chief Financial Officer GoCardless

Last Reviewed: September 26, 2026

Executive Summary

Catherine Birkett is Chief Financial Officer of GoCardless, the London-based account-to-account payments company, and her remit runs beyond finance into legal, regulatory and compliance and business systems. She came to GoCardless around the end of 2018 after about 16 years as CFO of the European telecoms provider Interoute, which she helped grow from $20 million to $800 million in turnover before its sale in May 2018. She sits on the GoCardless group’s UK boards and is a Non-Executive Director of the London-listed data and analytics company GlobalData Plc.

Career Highlights

• Chief Financial Officer of GoCardless, with responsibility for finance, legal, regulatory and compliance and business systems.
• Led three funding rounds at GoCardless, the last of which gave the company unicorn status, and oversaw a fivefold increase in revenue, according to her GlobalData board biography.
• Director of GoCardless Ltd since August 2023, and of GoCardless Holdings (UK) Ltd and Sentenial Limited since September 2024 (Companies House).
• Chief Financial Officer of Interoute for about 16 years: turnover grew from $20m to $800m, she led equity and debt raises including an inaugural high-yield bond, completed 10 acquisitions and oversaw the company’s sale in May 2018.
• Non-Executive Director of GlobalData Plc since March 2021.

Professional Journey

Before GoCardless, Birkett spent about 16 years as Chief Financial Officer of Interoute, which GlobalData’s biography describes as one of Europe’s fastest-growing telecoms providers. She has described being promoted to finance leadership young and learning on the job. As CFO she owned the business plan and ran its financing through both equity and debt markets, including the company’s first high-yield bond issue. Growth came partly from acquisitions: she completed ten, one of them of a business half Interoute’s size. Companies House records show her as a director of dozens of Interoute group companies, since dissolved. Her time there ended with the sale of the business in May 2018.

She joined GoCardless soon afterwards, just after it had closed its Series E round. In a 2020 interview with Banking Dive she said she had chosen it because its culture was different from traditional telecoms, and argued that in a high-growth company the CFO focuses on growth rather than cost control, while warning against cuts made “without considering the long-term impact”. Her GlobalData biography credits her with a fivefold increase in revenue at GoCardless and with leading three funding rounds, the last of which made it a unicorn. Her role has widened beyond finance to cover legal, regulatory and compliance and business systems. She has been a statutory director of GoCardless Ltd since August 2023, and of the holding company GoCardless Holdings (UK) Ltd and the subsidiary Sentenial Limited since September 2024.

Outside GoCardless, she joined the board of GlobalData Plc as a Non-Executive Director in March 2021.

Education

No education or professional qualification was found in a first-party or registry source.