Flex sues former CFO candidate; alleges stealing of ‘strategic crown jewels’
A former CFO candidate for Flexible Finance, operator of the Flex payment service, misappropriated trade secrets and used the information to help the expansion of a competitor where he currently serves as finance chief, according to a suit filed Monday in a Manhattan court.
Flex interviewed Alex Anderson, a finance executive with experience at Square operator Block, for the role of finance chief in early 2026, according to the suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
However, Anderson was allegedly also interviewing with a Flex competitor, Split Pay, at or around the same time frame, and utilized his access during his interview process to “steal Flex’s most valuable and closely guarded trade secrets,” the complaint states. The Monday suit claims Anderson officially joined Split Pay as its CFO in July of this year.
“What Defendants took was not information casually encountered in the ordinary course of business — it was Flex’s financial and strategic crown jewels, obtained under the cover of a confidentiality agreement that Anderson brazenly disregarded,” the complaint, which names both Anderson and Split Pay as defendants, alleges.
New York-based Flex and Miami, Florida-based Split Pay — incorporated under the name Visible Ideas — each offer a platform that enables users to split or break large monthly payments, such as rent, into smaller transactions, according to their respective websites.
Flex’s Aug. 3 complaint alleges that Anderson took advantage of his interview process to “mine” the payment platform for trade secrets. Anderson went through a series of interviews with members of Flex’s leadership team between March 25-27 of this year, including its CEO, chief operating officer and chief legal officer, according to the complaint.
When he was asked as part of the process to create a financial model outlining his “overarching vision” for Flex’s financial organization, the two signed an NDA agreement to share certain confidential information so Anderson could complete the exercise, according to the complaint.
The details shared under the NDA included a confidential memo addressed to Flex’s board of directors, which detailed its financial models, future business plans, and company strategic analysis.
It also included details about the payment company’s “most sensitive financial model,” called the “Flex Margin Model,” which Anderson personally requested and had not previously been shared with any other CFO candidate, the complaint alleges. The model includes proprietary information such as: actual projected financials for Flex business channels; detailed user data; unit network and distribution size; and contact terms for specific business partners.
When Flex declined to hire Anderson as CFO, he “turned to the very competitor he had been secretly considering all along, using the trade secret information he had received from Flex…to benefit Flex’s direct competitor in direct violation of the NDA he had signed,” the complaint states.
The complaint alleges that Anderson was formally interviewed for the CFO chair at Split Pay in or around the second quarter of this year, which he failed to disclose to Flex. He also maintained ongoing relationships with key members of Split’s leadership team as part of a group of professionals who had previously worked at Square, before starting the Flex interview process, according to the allegations.
Anderson does not appear on a company webpage detailing Split’s executive leadership team, which names Square alums Andrew Borovsky and Gerard Knight as co-founders. Borovsky serves as CEO, while Knight is responsible for operations, according to data from the Better Business Bureau. His LinkedIn profile currently shows him as serving in the role of head of business development for Block, a role he has held since February of last year. Before that role, he served as divisional CFO for Cash App and in numerous financial and data roles for Square, according to his LinkedIn.
Block did not respond to requests for comment on Anderson’s current employment status. CFO Dive was unable to confirm his employment status with Split Pay.
The suit also alleges that, once in possession of confidential information, Split swiftly moved to benefit by pivoting from its existing direct-to-consumer model in favor of rolling out a business-to-business model “shockingly similar” to that of Flex’s, which “exploits the confidential economic model Flex built over years of investment and iteration,” according to the allegations.
The complaint notes this represented an abrupt shift for its competitor and cites an instance in March 2026, where Split CEO Borovsky told Flex founder and CEO Shragie Lichtenstein that the company wasn’t interested in pursuing such a strategy.
Suspecting that its information had been compromised, Flex then demanded Split Pay and Anderson provide written assurances that they had not used confidential information in a July 14 notice, requesting responses by July 17. Anderson replied on July 23 “but remained suspiciously silent on the key question of whether he had used or shared Flex’s trade secrets,” according to the complaint. Split Pay has failed to respond or offer assurances that confidential information was not used as of the Aug. 3 filing of the complaint.
Flex is petitioning the court for the return of all trade secrets, an order for defendants to pay over “all gains, profits and advantages” derived from the alleged acts, and compensatory as well as exemplary or punitive damages, according to the complaint.
Attorneys for Split Pay, Anderson and Flex did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
