SHIFT THOUGHT LIMITED - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Managing Director, Digital Strategy at Citi
- Managing Director, Global Digital Strategy at Citi
A pioneer in the field of payments and a true entrepreneur, Aditya has helped to shape mobile payments through his work at Obopay and Yes Bank Ltd. Aditya is hailed as a visionary leader who can inspire teams to deliver their best.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director of the Fast
Brett McDowell currently serves as Executive Director of the Fast IDentity Online (FIDO) Alliance, the organization Brett helped establish in 2012 to remove the world's dependency on passwords through open standards for strong authentication. Brett is also an advisor to Agari and the Bitcoin Foundation.
Previously, Brett spent several years at PayPal where, as Head of Ecosystem Security, he was tasked with developing strategies and leading initiatives to make the Internet a safer environment for PayPal and their customers.
Carol Realini's work at Obopay has also been inspirational to me, as I had an early opportunity to meet her and follow her achievements in the US, Africa and India. I was therefore delighted when Carol shared with me about the book she and Karl Mehta were writing, "Financial Inclusion at the bottom of the pyramid". Naturally I wanted to share her story, below - Enjoy!
Carol, great to have you here today, please could you share with us a bit about what motivated you to write this book, and what you hope to achieve?
Carol Realini is co-author of "Financial Inclusion at the Bottom of the Pyramid". An expert in financial service innovation, Carol Realini is a serial entrepreneur and globally-recognized technology pioneer. Attending the World Economic Forum, she led global discussions on alternative banking. Recognized as a top woman in Silicon Valley, she sits on boards and advises financial services and mobile companies.
Job Titles:
- Author of the Digital Money Game, Co - Author Virtual Currencies - from Secrecy to Safety
- Payments and Remittances Expert
- Practice Lead, Digital Money
Job Titles:
- Chief Analyst, Digital Money / Co - Author of the Digital Money Game, Author of Virtual Currencies - from Secrecy to Safety
The Gemalto Mobile Payment Platform is running in India with India Post for domestic remittance, since November 2012. India Post's domestic money transfer service was a traditional paper-based service that took around 5 days to arrive at the destination. India Post wanted to modernise the service, to compete with the new mobile money systems coming from new entrants such as mobile operators. Since India Post has close to 90% of their branches in rural areas, they decided to modernize their money transfer service using mobile. It's an interesting over-the-counter service. The agents at the post office are equipped with a mobile device that runs an app that collects information about the sender and recipient, amount and pickup location. Immediately both sender and receiver get SMS notifications about the transfer and how to pick it up. And the transfer happens in minutes!
Job Titles:
- Executive Director, New Digital Payments
Karena de Souza is a forward thinking and entrepreneurial professional with a special interest in payment streams for small business. Karena's focus on mobile finance blends the challenges and opportunites she faced as a small business owner in Canada with her experience using technology to facilitate financial services while at Morgan Stanley in New York. She graduated from the University of Westminster with a BSc (Hons) Mathematics and Computing.
Job Titles:
- Senior Manager Corporate Strategy at Nets Denmark
Kristian T. Sørensen (KS), Senior Manager Corporate Strategy at Nets Denmark. Prior to this, Kristian spent ten years working within online and mobile financial services at Danish Bank, Nykredit. Kristian holds a master's degree in Communication and Psychology, and has worked with online solutions since the early days of the Internet in the mid-1990s and with online financial services since 2002. Kristian has participated in Mobey Forum since 2010 and has been an active contributor to the production of mobile wallet white papers. He was elected to the Board and Chairman of the Marketing Work group in 2012 and is a sought after Speaker and Thought Leader in the field of Payments.
Job Titles:
- Vice President & Head for Payments Innovation, Digital Ecosystem
- Vice President and Head, E - Money Innovation
I have with me Lito Villanueva, Vice President and Head, e-Money Innovation, Digital Ecosystem Build & Global Engagements at Smart Communications, Inc. Lito shares how 14 years down the line, SMART is launching innovative services to create new revenue streams.
Lito Villanueva is Vice President & Head for Payments Innovation, Digital Ecosystem & Global Engagements at Smart Communications, Inc.
Lito has unique expertise that crosses multiple segments and services from his work at SMART, IFC-World Bank and Visa. He is one of the few mobile money global practitioners to have a mix of experience in both banking and MNO sectors with a great deal of exposure in multi-market interventions and global best practices with established relationships with key stakeholders including international funding agencies.
Job Titles:
- Director of Marketing for Mobile Financial Services
Naomi joined Gemalto in 2010, where she drives marketing and strategy for the company's mobile payment and mobile wallet solutions. She is an expert on the mobile money use cases emerging across the globe and is involved in some of the most ambitious and large-scale mCommerce services in both developed and developing markets.
Job Titles:
- VP and Head of First Data India Ventures
Nitish Asthana is the VP and Head of First Data India Ventures, focused on venture investments in POS, e-commerce, mobile commerce and digital payments. He has led the merchant acquiring business for First Data- ICICI Merchant Services (ICICI MS) and had overall responsibility over ICICI MS revenue lines across the company's POS and Ecommerce businesses, acceptance and acquiring product solutions, sales, business development and marketing.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Head of Product
Olaf Taupitz is Head of Product and Innovation and a Member of Board at cashcloud.
Olaf is in charge of managing all initiatives of the company and he oversees the development of cashcloud's application and technical set up, including management of outsourced partnerships. He brings to his role key expertise from his experience at IPS International Prepay Solution AF, CALL4T, Tele2 and his other work at the intersection of Telecoms, Payments and Card services.
Job Titles:
- Head of Strategy & Projects at Easypaisa
Prior to his 5 years of experience in Mobile Financial Services, Omar headed the GSM Value Added Services Products unit at Telenor. He has also worked with Teradata and has experience in Advanced Analytics with Data Warehouses for mobile operators and banks in the MEA region.
A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, Omar also has 3 years of experience in working as a Software Engineer with different organizations in the States including IBM. He also holds a MBA degree from the LUMS, Pakistan.
Raju Oak - Managing Director
Job Titles:
- Managing Director
- International Consultant
- Managing Director / Shift Thought Limited / United Kingdom
Raju is an international consultant with broad experience in realising business strategy through large business transformation programmes, process management and operational excellence, business development, enterprise architecture and IT. He works at the intersection of business and technology, across several industries and geographies and has consistently led innovative and pioneering engagements to success. He is recognised for providing thought leadership, strategy, organising and leading teams and mentoring clients and colleagues.
Raju is the Managing Director of Shift Thought. He is also responsible for developing the vision, architecture and strategy of the S.A.G.E knowledge management platform underpinning all the business lines in Shift Thought.
Job Titles:
- Managing Director of My Mobile Payments Ltd
Shashank Joshi is the Managing Director of My Mobile Payments Ltd, a leading mobile payments solutions company based in Mumbai, India, which owns the "Money-on-Mobile" brand. A serial entrepreneur, Shashank has over 22 years of professional experience of leading companies in the areas of IT and ITES, Outsourcing, Transition, Management consulting and Mobile Solutions. He pioneered the successful execution of Merchant Cash Advance and Merchant Processing businesses through the offshore route. Shashank studied Mechanical Engineering from MIT.
Job Titles:
- Manager, Business Development at NPCI, India
Sumeet Kohli is Manager, Business Development at NPCI, India. Sumeet handles Business Development & its strategic roles for enabling Payments for National Key Accounts across Industry verticals like Banks, Insurance & Mutual Fund companies, NBFCs, Utility Companies, Telecom, Trust, NGOs, E-commerce merchants and Corporates.
His overall experience covers various payment modes including NACH, ECS, Online Payment Gateway, Direct debit, IMPS, Mobile Payments, IVRS, CTS, EBPP, NEFT/RTGS, Cheque & Cash Management.
Tomasz Krajewski is Head of mCommerce/Superwallet at eLeader. He is responsible for development of SuperWallet, which claims to be the first wallet to combine mobile banking, mobile payments and mobile commerce services, thus adding value to mobile banking. The first SuperWallet was deployed in November 2013 in BZ WBK (the biggest bank of Santander Group in CEE). eLeader is one of the world's top mobile innovators in the smartphone business software market, used by global and national companies in over 70 countries worldwide.
Will Alibaba succeed to keeping the dynamism that allowed it to grow, as it grows into such a large business, and how will it cope with the responsibilities of being a bank and still adapting and growing to meet the unique requirements of MSMEs?
So far China had one private bank, China Minsheng Bank. Alibaba's main competitor Tencent has also set up a banke, Webank. Which of the other 248+ recently licensed PSPs are likely to follow suit, and how will being a bank help or hinder them?
As Chinese companies increasingly go international, how can global brands be protected? In Europe MyBank has just been investing heavily in setting itself up as a pan-European initiative. MYBank is not yet finalised as the English name that will be used by Alibaba, but are there sufficient deterrents to prevent it from using this existing brand name? I see this as yet another example of how consumers may be confused as they seek to use services from increasingly global players.