Pavilion Payments Names Mary Beth Higgins CEO, Promotes Alyssa Beaver to Chief Revenue Officer
Pavilion Payments, a payments and technology provider for the gaming industry, has named Mary Beth Higgins as Chief Executive Officer and promoted Alyssa Beaver to Chief Revenue Officer. Both appointments are effective immediately. For an industry where the reliability of your payments partner is non-negotiable, who sits in the top two seats at a supplier like Pavilion is worth paying attention to.
Why Leadership Change at a Gaming Payments Provider Matters Now
Payments sit at the centre of every operator’s business. Deposits, withdrawals, cash access on the casino floor, settlement behind the scenes, all of it runs through providers like Pavilion. So when the company changes both its chief executive and its revenue chief at once, the move speaks to direction rather than routine housekeeping. The company itself framed the appointments as strengthening its leadership team as it continues to grow and expand its presence across the gaming industry.
What Mary Beth Higgins Brings to Pavilion Payments as CEO
Higgins is not an outside hire parachuted in. She had been serving as Pavilion’s Interim Chief Financial Officer, so she steps into the CEO role already knowing the business, its customers and its opportunities. She carries more than 30 years of executive leadership across gaming, spanning both casino operators and technology providers.
Her track record leans heavily toward financial complexity and large-scale structure. She previously served as CEO of Affinity Interactive and its sister company, Gaming and Hospitality Acquisition Corp. (NASDAQ: GHACU). Earlier, she played a role in forming VICI Properties, the real estate investment trust created through the restructuring of Caesars Entertainment Operating Company, and served as CFO of CEOC, overseeing the finances of 38 casino properties across 14 US states and five countries. Her earlier CFO positions include Global Cash Access Holdings, now IGT, Herbst Gaming, and Camco, Inc. She also sits as Lead Director on the Board of Trustees of Chatham Lodging Trust (NYSE: CLDT) and on the board of Klai Juba Wald Architects.
Zach Sadek, Senior Partner at Parthenon Capital, pointed to that combination in backing the appointment, saying since joining as Interim CFO, Higgins had “demonstrated the strategic judgment, operational discipline and leadership needed to guide the company forward.”
What Alyssa Beaver’s Promotion Means for Pavilion’s Revenue Strategy
Beaver’s rise has been quick. She joined Pavilion in May 2025 as Senior Vice President of Sales, running the company’s brick-and-mortar sales organisation, and now takes charge of the full revenue organisation as Chief Revenue Officer. Her brief covers revenue strategy, deeper customer relationships, and expanding Pavilion’s footprint, working closely with the Product, Operations and Service teams to keep customer needs aligned with the wider business.
Before Pavilion, she led Sales and Marketing at Passport Technology, where she grew EBITDA substantially over four and a half years and secured several key enterprise accounts. Her earlier experience includes enterprise sales at Apriva and a role at Paycom.
“Pavilion has significant momentum, and I’m incredibly proud of what our team has accomplished together,” Beaver said of the promotion.
What the Pavilion Payments Leadership Shift Signals for Gaming Operators
The pairing is telling. A finance leader with heavy restructuring and capital-formation experience in the CEO chair, alongside a sales-rooted executive elevated to own revenue, reads as a company preparing to scale deliberately rather than drift. Higgins knows how to build and restructure capital-intensive gaming businesses; Beaver knows how to grow accounts and tighten the connection between what customers want and what the organisation delivers. For operators choosing or renewing a payments partner, that blend of financial steadiness and commercial focus is a reasonable thing to want on the other side of the table.
What Gaming Operators Should Still Watch at Pavilion Payments
This is an announcement, not yet a result. The appointments are fresh and effective immediately, which means the strategy they point to has not played out. The press release is a single official source, and it understandably frames everything in the best light. Credentials and intent are clear; delivery, customer impact and whatever growth phase the company is signalling will only become visible over the quarters ahead.
What Comes Next for Pavilion Payments and the Gaming Market?
For now, the practical question is how quickly the new structure translates into sharper service and expansion for the operators Pavilion serves. A CEO fluent in capital formation and a CRO focused on customer alignment suggest a company positioning for its next stage of growth, and in a payments market where trust and continuity carry real commercial value, leadership clarity at a key supplier is itself a signal operators will weigh. The real test is whether that intent shows up in the partnerships and performance that follow.
Source: Pavilion Payments
