Judges

Roger Alexander

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 held 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. He is a graduate of London University and has gained a reputation for strategic thought and innovation.

Roger was the recipient of the Industry Personality of the Year trophy at The Card Awards 2008.

Sandra Alzetta

Sandra has over 25 years’ experience as a senior executive in payments and FinTech.  She was at the forefront of Visa’s products and innovation for 20 years, having led Visa’s European functions responsible for the development and management of all Visa’s 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 Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay.  Sandra currently provides business consultancy services, including leading product and marketing at a FinTech in the blockchain world.

Mark Bergdahl

Mark has worked in sales, marketing and consultancy for more than 25 years. He has been involved in the design and implementation of customer handling processes and systems in Financial Services, Telecommunications and Retail. For the last 10 years he has used his depth of loyalty knowledge and experience to assist Financial Services organisations with strategy and execution.

Within the Financial Services Industry, Mark has led a number of high profile loyalty engagements with organisations such as American Express in Europe, Barclaycard in the UK Alpha Bank in Greece, Aduno Group in Switzerland and Bradesco Bank in Brazil. His interest and passion for loyalty stemmed from working with with dunnhumby in the UK. Having understood the ‘Tesco Way’ and how to apply this significant experience across a number of industries, Mark set up Loyalty Consulting UK, (LCUK) in 2003.

LCUK is a boutique consulting practice concentrating on loyalty strategy and services for customers across the globe, from Brazil to the USA, from the UK to Kazakhstan. Initially specialising in the Financial Services Industry, LCUK today, provide design and implementation services for the delivery of schemes and programmes in the Financial Services, Telecommunications, Travel, Health and Retail industries.

Mark has spent a number of years challenging the conventions of organisational structure, cross departmental business processes, sales culture and marketing hype. He believes that with focused leadership, organisations can grasp the opportunity that data led marketing propositions can offer to almost any organisation.

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 customer loyalty.

Marcia Clay

Marcia is Senior Vice President, Market Development for Mastercard UK and Ireland.

In this role, Marcia is responsible for developing and executing the Mastercard business strategy and development plans for UK and Ireland to drive market growth and performance. Previously, she managed Key Customer relationships at Mastercard.

Marcia has extensive experience in payments, having worked in the UK and International markets.

Before joining Mastercard, she was Vice-President, Client Development at First Data and then prior to this, held a number of roles at American Express, leading new product development and marketing strategy with international market teams, expanding key industry relationships within the travel sector and developing the American Express card acceptance network. Marcia moved into the American Express Card Services business after joining American Express in their Corporate Services division, responsible for the supply of business travel and card services to multinational customers.

Becky Clements

Becky has close involvement with the UK Payment System Regulator (PSR) and has sat on the Advisory Panel and the Payment Strategy Forum and chaired the Working Group for Implementation Planning for the New Payment Architecture which is part of the PSF consultation paper issued in July 2017. She was also chosen to be part of the Delivery group commissioned by the Bank of England and the PSR for the consolidation of the three Retail Payment schemes representing small and middle sized financial organisations. Becky was a member of the BoE Advisory Board for the replacement of RTGS and has held non-executive Directorship positions for the New Payment System Operator (NPSO), Faster Payments Scheme , Payments UK and the Interim Trade Association.

This close involvement with Industry change gives her a unique perspective on the progress and work being taken to improve customers’ payment experience.

At Metro Bank she was Head of Industry Engagement, responsible for payments and card change activity, as well as leading industry and third party engagement. Becky has extensive experience of working with the payments industry and delivering long-term, sustainable value to both customers and business.

Becky is currently Director of Payments for UK Finance leading a strong team with deep domain knowledge delivering thought leadership on policy working closely with the regulators in the UK and Europe for the good of the membership.

Sarah Colville

Sarah Colville is the Vice President of Commercials for TSYS International markets. She is the business owner for new client contracts, contract renewals, partner agreements, pricing and other commercial aspect of the business including leading the engagements with the schemes and other partners supporting the European Issuer Solutions business.

She has over 20 years’ experience in Financial Services after graduating with a Business Law LLB (Hons) degree from the University of Huddersfield. Colville began her career in Financial Services with GE Capital Consumer Finance Ltd in various operational management roles including Fraud Management and Customer Service across Retail Store Card, Consumer and Commercial products. Colville then spent 10 years with TSYS as a founding member of TSYS Europe from 2001 to 2011, holding a number of Strategic relationship roles and was the recipient of the TSYS President’s Circle award in 2008.

In her time away from TSYS Colville held various leadership positions at Williams Lea Tag Ltd, and more recently as the Chief Operating Officer for Contis Group Ltd.

Colville re- joined the TSYS International leadership team in May 2018.

Úna Dillon

Úna is Managing Director of the Merchant Risk Council (Europe), the leading global trade association for eCommerce fraud and payments professionals. She is currently chair of the European Payments Council Card Fraud Prevention Forum and has been a Board Director of several companies including EAST (the European ATM Security Team) which is responsible for providing advice and information to POS and ATM vendors, owners and operators, on detecting and preventing payment crime.

She was responsible for Laser Card, the Irish national debit card scheme for 12 years and was Head of IPSO Card Services, responsible for driving the development of policy on major initiatives such as SEPA.

Her credibility with the press is widely known, as she became the go-to for TV, radio and print media journalists over the past 16 years, on all subjects relating to payments, financial crime and retail operations.

Dan Edelman

Dan Edelman is Head of Marketing and Business Insights at American Express Merchant Services Europe. He is responsible for the merchant marketing strategy and delivery of the strategy to drive value to all merchants on the network in Europe.

He has held a variety of positions in 9 years at American Express including; Vice President of B2B Marketing for Europe, Vice President of Mobile and Pre Paid Product Development for Entreprise Growth and Marketing Director for the Global Client Group in Merchant Services.

Dan previously worked for 4 years at 2020 strategy consulting working on marketing and business strategy projects with a number of European leading retailers and global automotive brands.

He attended the University of Manchester where he obtained a BSc (Hons) in Management Science and subsequently University of Manchester Business School where he obtained a commercially sponsored PhD in Business and Marketing Strategy.

Andrew Gilchrist

Andrew was most recently the European Head of Corporate Development for MasterCard, responsible for identifying and pursuing strategic opportunities for acquisitions, investments and partnerships that helped to build MasterCard’s capabilities and presence in Europe.  Andrew led the sale of VocaLink to MasterCard which completed in mid-2017, giving MasterCard a unique position in both cards and account-to-account payments.

Andrew was also involved with supporting MasterCard VocaLink’s activities in the emerging FinTech space, working as a mentor on the successful FinTech StartupBootCamp programme.

Prior to this, Andrew spent 8 years as Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs at Paysafe Group, managing their corporate development, investor relations and public relations activities. Paysafe Group comprises the NetBanx payment processing business, the Skrill and NETeller e-Wallet businesses and Net+ prepaid card business.

He began his career qualifying as a chartered accountant with KPMG in London before moving into their Corporate Finance department. From here, Andrew worked with a number of investment banks in London including HSBC, Bear Stearns and Canaccord Genuity, focusing on technology mergers and acquisitions and corporate fundraisings.

Andrew recently left MasterCard to establish his own advisory and consulting business, helping fintech and early stage companies with support in their corporate development and financing needs.

Chris Harris

Peter Jones

Peter has over 40 years business and IT experience, four with a major European retailer (C&A Brenninkmeyer), 17 with a UK clearing bank (National Westminster Bank) and 24 as Managing Director and owner of PSE Consulting.  He is from a processing and IT background, has led and managed major development projects and also had extensive operational responsibility for delivering POS solutions, extensive bespoke retail systems and credit card related services.  He has particular expertise in regulation, M&A, payments strategy, gateway processing, interbank schemes and retailer systems.  He also has an extensive knowledge of acquiring, alternative payments, debit and credit cards, card schemes and interchange.  Over the past 21 years, he has been responsible for the management of over 1,500 payments assignments for clients within the UK, Europe, the Middle East, Russia and India.  He is well known in the EU’s payments business and is a frequent speaker at conferences and writer on topical payments issues.

Richard Koch

Richard is a recognised authority in the fast moving payments space, having worked in the industry for over 25 years. Until recently he was Head of Cards at UK Finance, where he  provides a representative voice for the UK cards payment industry and was at the centre of evolving legislation and regulation, delivering a number of globally-recognised projects that delivered tangible benefits for consumers. He has  previously worked at with some of the largest UK banks, including Lloyds.

He is currently a partner in JAM ICT, a boutique consulting practice specialising in strategy, products & propositions and customer experience across the digital payments landscape. Blending market experience, expansive knowledge of the political and regulatory landscape and new and emerging technologies, he is committed to designing and delivering innovation, driving new revenue opportunities and championing customer propositions and outcomes.

Elmar Leissle

In this role, Elmar is responsible for developing and executing the marketing strategy and initiatives to drive market growth and performance of Visa products, services and brand across financial institution clients, consumers and merchants as well as product proposition development and go to market for Visa in UK & Ireland.

Previously Elmar has worked across a range of regional marketing and business leadership positions in Visa covering Market Planning, Cross Border business development and Marketing in Growth and Emerging markets. He has extensive experience in payments across Europe, Middle East and Africa. Prior to joining Visa Elmar worked with Vodafone Germany inn consumer and trade sales & marketing.

Thaer Sabri

Thaer has more than 15 years’ experience in the electronic money industry, in a regulatory capacity as well as in product management and business development. Thaer worked at Mondex International and beenz.com before founding Flawless Money in 2001. He is chief executive of the Electronic Money Association (www.e-ma.org), he leads industry interface with regulators and is a member of the European Commission Market Experts Group. Thaer advises clients on EU and global payments regulation. He attended Sheffield University, Imperial College (University of London) and Birkbeck College (University of London) and qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales.

Matt Sloan

Matt Sloan is Managing Director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa for Discover Financial Services. He is responsible for growing the Discover business through partnerships in a network that currently consists of 40 banks across 65 markets.

Matt has been in this EMEA role since 2009 but has been with Discover for 16 years. In that period he has a held a variety of positions including Marketing Director at the Morgan Stanley branded consumer banking start up in the UK and more recently he ran the Discover Consumer Marketing business in the US.

Prior to joining Discover Matt held various marketing and business development roles in Europe at HSBC, American Express and Household Financial Services. Matt has an M.A. in History from Cambridge University and an M.B.A from the Kellogg School of Management.