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.

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.

Chris Harris

Peter Jones

Peter Jones, Managing Director, 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.

Kelley C. Knutson

Netspend is a leading provider of digital acquisition, retention, activation and life cycle management solutions for prepaid/virtual account users in the United States.  The company’s focus is servicing the estimated 60+ million US consumers who do not have a traditional bank account or who rely primarily on alternative financial services for their household needs.  The Netspend business generates almost $800 million in revenue through over 5 million active accounts (almost 3 million direct deposit accounts) with over $30 billion in gross debit volume.  The business has over 120K employers/distribution (and 130K reload) locations and partners with such household consumer brands such as PayPal, Western Union, Brinks, HEB, CVS, Walmart, Liberty Tax, Major League Baseball, United Airlines, etc., as well as delivering consumer digital propositions through the US market leading prepaid brand, Netspend.  Kelley is responsible for the overall P&L of the business which incorporates four primary revenue channels (Direct, Partner, Retail and Paycard), as well as functional groups such as finance, human resources, product development/management, marketing, operations, technology and customer services.  Kelley is also a member of the TSYS Executive Leadership Team (ELT).  Previously, Kelley was President of TSYS International where he was responsible for all non-North American activities/initiatives/Clients for TSYS around the globe.

Prior to TSYS, Kelley was CEO of Clear Money Ltd., a leading provider of Electronic Bill Management Services and before that he was Senior Vice President of GE Capital’s Global Consumer Finance (GCF). Kelley also worked with Visa International as Senior Vice President, responsible for developing/marketing Visa’s debit products and introducing new e-commerce solutions throughout Europe. Before joining Visa, he worked for Simpson Paper Company, TRW and General Dynamics where his focus was on product/marketing strategies, pricing, and risk/portfolio management

Richard Koch

Richard is the Head of Cards for UK Finance, which represents the leading firms providing finance, banking, markets and payments-related services in or from the UK. Through engagement on behalf of its members, UK Finance is committed to delivering good outcomes for consumers through effective, evidence-based policy development and facilitating collaborative innovation. Richard has over 25 years of experience in banking, including having worked in variety of roles in the card payment business of the Lloyds Banking Group for over a decade, with responsibility for relationships with payment schemes, interaction with industry bodies and implementation of industry-wide initiatives.

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.