Thursday 6 February 2025 - JW Marriott Grosvenor House, London
Roger Alexander is acknowledged as an industry expert and a veteran of the cards industry; he had a long and successful career at Barclays Bank including over 20 years at Barclaycard where he had a number of different roles in both the acquiring and issuing businesses. Since leaving Barclays he has been CEO of S2 (aka Switch), the UK’s original domestic card scheme, and Elavon Merchant Services, one of Europe’s foremost acquiring businesses. ‘For the last 15 years Roger has had a portfolio of NED roles with both public and private companies in Europe and the USA. He also acts as an Advisor to CEOs of technology and financial businesses and sits on the Payments Advisory Board of Pennies, the UK’s Payments Industry Charity. Roger is a graduate of London University and has gained a reputation for strategic thought and innovation.
Sandra Alzetta is VP, Global Head of Commerce & Customer Service at Spotify, the world's most popular audio streaming subscription service with more than 550m users, including 220m subscribers in over 180 markets. She is responsible for leading Spotify’s approach to commerce, ensuring Spotify’s users can buy and sell seamlessly, safely and efficiently, and to customer service, advocating and caring for Spotify’s users. Before joining Spotify, Sandra provided consultancy services, including leading product and marketing at a fintech specialising in crypto/digital custodial and settlement services. Prior to that, Sandra was at the forefront of Visa's products and innovation for over 20 years, having led Visa's European functions responsible for the development and management of all issuance and acceptance products, digital and innovation. Sandra led the fundamental change in the way people pay through the development and roll-out of Visa contactless payments across Europe. She pioneered mobile payments, from the initial vision through to the launch of Visa with Apple/Google/Samsung Pay. Sandra is a Non-Executive Board Director for Fabrick and previously served as Spotify’s representative on the Diem Association’s Council. Sandra holds a Master of Engineering from the University of Strathclyde and was sponsored throughout this by IBM.
Mark is the Managing Director of Loyalty Consulting UK Ltd, (LCUK), one of the foremost boutique consultancy practices focused entirely on loyalty techniques and best practices for consumers and businesses. Prior to his creation of LCUK, Mark worked in the IT industry, predominantly in the international retail banking market. Mark speaks regularly at conferences and with many years of international experience. He has a vast knowledge of the full spectrum of issues and opportunities surrounding the world of CRM and loyalty together with a deep understanding of the retail financial services industry.
Sarah Colville is the Senior Vice President for International Sales, Commercials and Service at TSYS in it's International Issuer solutions business.
She is the owner of pre-sales, product sales, new business sales, new client contracts, contract renewals, and other commercial aspects of the business.
Robert is a valued and highly respected industry expert with a distinguished career in the card and payments industry. Robert has deep expertise in digital assets and e-money, and is highly skilled in all aspects of consumer finance issues, including banking regulation and compliance, consumer protection and AML/CTF. He was regularly named a key player in the Payments Power 10 (including #1 in 2015), a highly competitive ranking of the influential contributors in payments. Previously, Robert achieved success as a senior legal professional specialising in matters relating to cards and payments. He regularly speaks on issues facing the European Payments’ Industry including laws relating to Electronic Money, Payment Services, AML/CTF, Digital Assets and CBDCs.
A highly respected and talented business leader, with over 48 years of experience in Banking and Payments, the last 25 of which have been in Senior Executive and Board roles. Chris is renowned for his strong leadership qualities and ability to deliver significant results, evidenced through his participation in several game-changing activities over many years of consistent achievement. Driven by a strong work ethic, a creative mind and highly tuned leadership and communication skills, Chris delivers a winning balance of leadership and people management, strategic thinking and practical implementation that brings short, medium and long term success. From 2013 to 2022, reporting initially to the Group CEO and subsequently the President and COO, Chris led the European business of Global Payments Inc. (NYSE: GPN), a leading payments technology company delivering innovative software and services to customers in over 100 countries. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia with nearly 24,000 team members worldwide, Global Payments is a Fortune 500® company. He retired from his executive role in April 2022, but remained as a Non-Executive Director for several of Global Payments’ active business units in the UK, Spain, Portugal and Ireland until February 2023. Since then, Chris has begun to build a portfolio of roles where he can continue to contribute to the payments industry, with an emphasis on growth strategies and on executive development. He remains open to further opportunities of this nature.
Úna Dillon is Vice President of Global Expansion and Advocacy at the MRC where she brings the voice of the industry, on all areas of payments, to Financial Regulators, policy makers, standards bodies, and card schemes, influencing change globally. She is 30 years in the payments industry and currently holds various roles including Advisor on the European Commission Payments Systems Market Expert Group, is on the Board of EMVCo and she was Chair of the European Payments Council Card Fraud Prevention Expert Group for several years. She has been a Judge for these awards for 19 years running.
Dave Edwards is Vice President of Demand Generation at American Express, International Card Services. He has a longstanding marketing career in the financial services sector, and at American Express holds a broad brief that sees him lead the demand generation team in the UK for all its varied customers, spanning both consumer and business audiences. Dave plays a central part of the brand’s efforts to understand and connect with its prospective Cardmembers, increasingly made up of Millennials and Gen Z cohorts, by focusing on their priorities and interests. His role covers brand marketing, card acquisition and Amex’s UK Experiences programme which includes high-profile sponsorships such as London Restaurant Festival, National Theatre and Somerset House Summer Series. In addition Dave spearheads innovative initiatives like the Amex Gold Unsigned programme – a ground-breaking campaign that helps champion, support and platform unsigned and emerging music artists in the UK.
Andrew is currently an Investment Director at the corporate venture capital arm of Volvo Cars, the Volvo Cars Tech Fund. This role encompasses the end to end process of scouting, assessing, negotiating and closing strategic investments in the area of mobility and sustainability. Andrew also acts as a board observer to a number of portfolio companies for the Tech Fund. Andrew has spent many years working in the banking/fintech/payments space, advising both startups and larger businesses on the rapidly changing fintech and payments market, both with his own venture consulting firm and other organisations. Andrew has acted as investor, adviser, director, mentor and CEO for a wide range of businesses and brings a deep level of experience to growing and more established companies. He has been a judge of the Cards and Payments Awards since 2017 and finds it an invaluable way to keep appraised of new market developments.
Tribh has over 25 years’ experience in the payments industry across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, focused on payments, technology, marketing, and business development. Based in London, Tribh is responsible for developing the Discover business across the European region – expanding acceptance, building the Diners Club franchise business, and fintech partnerships. Prior to joining Discover in 2013, Tribh was the Managing Director of Modirum a technology and payment services company. Before joining Modirum in 2009 Tribh was head of Innovation and Emerging Payments at Visa and prior to that Tribh held several other positions at Visa including Head of CNP Acceptance, Head of e-Commerce & Technology Development. Tribh has successfully led the development and launch of new products and services in EMEA region for e-commerce, Authentication, Mobile Commerce, Contactless and NFC payments and is a co-inventor on 4 patents for remote authentication and mobile payments.
Tribh holds a bachelor’s degree in Physics from Delhi University, a bachelor’s degree in Computer & Communications Systems from University of Greenwich and an MBA from OU Business School.
Rachael has over 20 years’ experience in the global consumer payments industry spanning retail banking, prepaid programme management and payments technology and is recognised for her product development and strategic thinking. Rachael currently leads the Customer Solution Architect Team in the UK and Ireland with responsibility for proposition development and solution bundling across products and segments. She plays a critical role in ensuring relevance and driving differentiation. Rachael joined Mastercard in 2010 and has held a range of strategically focussed roles which have seen her participate in multiple industry wide programmes and take a leading role for the UK division in the integration of the Vocalink business. Before joining Mastercard, she held a range of product development and management roles at Travelex and Barclays.
Peter Jones, Chairman and Founder, has over 40 years business and IT experience, 4 with a major European retailer (C&A Brenninkmeyer), 17 with a UK clearing bank (National Westminster Bank) and 28 as Chairman and Founder of PSE Consulting. He is from a processing and IT background and has led major development projects relating to payments systems.
King joined Featurespace in 2012. Formerly the Managing Director of augmented reality company Aurasma, she has an extensive career in media and technology, including leadership roles at Yahoo! Europe and Capital Radio. Under King's leadership, Featurespace has become the world's leading provider of Enterprise Financial Crime prevention software, risk scoring events and preventing fraud and financial crime in more than 180 countries. The company has also raised more than £100 million in funding, supporting its ongoing expansion and ability to protect more than 30 major global financial institutions, including HSBC, TSYS, Worldpay, NatWest Group, Danske Bank and ClearBank. Since 2018, she been honored by PaymentsSource as one of its Most Influential Women in Payments and was previously been named a “Top 40 Powerful Women in Tech” by Silicon Republic. In 2019, she was recognized by Cambridge News as its Business Person of the Year and received the Industry Achievement Award from Cards & Payments. Most recently, King was named "Woman Entrepreneur of the Year" in Business Weekly's 30th Anniversary Awards. An expert in business leadership, financial services and specialized technologies, Martina has spoken at conferences and to broadcasters around the world.
Richard is a recognised authority in the payments space, having worked in the industry for over 25 years. Blending market experience, expansive knowledge of the political and regulatory landscape with new and emerging technologies, he is committed to designing and delivering innovation and championing customer propositions and outcomes.
Tania is the Global Head of B2B Travel for Visa Commercial Solutions, where she responsible for the creation and execution of the business strategy for this rapidly evolving, high growth vertical segment. Bringing more than 25 years of experience in the payments, financial services and telecommunications sectors, Tania has led successful businesses around the world. Prior to joining Visa in early 2024, she managed the Commercial team at Outpayce from Amadeus, serving the global travel ecosystem with new advances in payments. Tania has also previously held senior business development roles at American Express, MasterCard Payment Gateway Services, Vodafone and IDT.
In addition to nurturing client and partner relationships and driving business performance, she is passionate about developing teams and is a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion. She is also a volunteer fundraiser for Food Bank Aid - a North London charity that supplies over 30 food banks across the region.
Candice Pressinger is Director of Customer Data Security at Elavon Merchant Services, one of the world’s largest payments companies. Candice leads Elavon’s data security products, services and consulting solutions helping protect businesses from payments fraud, data breaches and other security threats. Most recently, she launched a Transaction Risk Analysis service to help merchants process payments without friction and maintain low rates of fraud, in line with the Second Payments Services Directive (PSD2). She works closely with some of Europe’s largest retailers including: Inditex, Primark and BP. Prior to Elavon, Candice spent over a decade at British Telecom, serving as Head of Group PCI-DSS Compliance, and leading a team of 100 professionals to implement PCI Data Security globally for 27 platforms, 80 third-party suppliers and 80m transactions per year. As a recognised industry awards winner, Candice balances the world of payments and data security with being a mum of three and likes cycling, travelling and theatre.
James has more than 20 years’ experience in research, analysis, copywriting and strategic marketing. As a freelancer or ghost writer he has written for The Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The National Post (Canada) and major trade titles. He has held senior marketing positions at Visa, AEGON and AON, and worked as Managing Editor of Payments Cards & Mobile for six years before founding Eris Intelligence in 2024. He has written for many of the world’s largest payments and technology firms, including Visa, Mastercard and Discover. He holds a BA and MA from Cambridge, an MBA with distinction from the University of Edinburgh, and was a graduate scholar at Boston University.