Digital Payments South Asia

Navin Surya is the Chairman of Fintech Convergence Council (FCC) which is part of IAMAI/PCI Industry association. He is also Chairman Emeritus of Payments Council of India (PCI) and has served PCI as Chairman for over 10 years. Navin is also Member of Innovation Council of National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). Navin is also Advisor to Mitsui & Co. Ltd, Tokyo, Japan for advising on some of their specific investment portfolio companies. Navin has also made investment in some of the companies which are driving digital future and digital transformation in our country. One such recent investment is in Astute Energy which is working to transform Energy Management sector from old analogue days to current day of digital and connected.

Sanjay Jain is the Chief Innovation Officer at CIIE, where he leads efforts to help promote, and encourage entrepreneurship in areas around digital technology. Sanjay is also a volunteer with iSPIRT, the software product industry think tank. He has been one of the key contributors to help create, and evangelize various government open APIs, which are collectively referred to as the India Stack.

Sanjay is a team member of the High-Level Committee on Deepening of Digital Payments set up by the Reserve Bank of India. This committee was set up with a view to encourage digitisation of payments and enhance financial inclusion through digitisation. During his career, Sanjay has been responsible for the development of many large scale, high impact systems. He was the Chief Product Manager at the UIDAI. Earlier, he helped create and launch Google Map Maker, a crowd-sourced mapping product that helped to build Google Maps data for 170+ countries (including India).

Sanjay holds an M.S. in Computer Science, from the University of California, Los Angeles and a B.Tech in Computer Science & Engineering, from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai.

Subhrajit Basu in his role as Regional SVP, APAC for Discover Global network manages all franchise relationships, network to network partners and business interactions in the designated markets, to develop and maintain committed partnerships and strengthen the Discover Global network business and brand. Mr. Basu joined Discover Financial Services in July, 2011. He started with managing the Diners Club business in South Asia followed by expansion of role to manage Discover Global network business including Network to network relationships and other geographies including South Asia, Singapore, Malaysia & Philippines. He has overall professional experience of 18+ years and 15+ years of experience in cards and payments. Prior to joining Discover financial services, he has worked with Visa, Standard Chartered Bank & Maruti Suzuki.

Mr. Bhatnagar, Associate Director, PCI Security Standards Council leads the Council’s efforts in increasing adoption and awareness of the PCI Security Standards in India. In this role, Mr. Bhatnagar works closely with the PCI Council Management Team, affiliate members, payment brands, regulators, Merchants, Service Providers and key influencers/decision makers from payment card industry. His primary responsibilities include gathering feedback from industry leaders and driving education effort by increasing participation from India through active involvement in local and regional events, industry conferences and meetings with key stakeholders. Mr. Bhatnagar is an innovative thinker, passionate speaker and technical writer and has been featured in leading media organization ISMG, BBC World News, CNBC Awaaz, CNBC TV18, Economic Times, Times of India and Hindustan Times. Mr. Bhatnagar has been working in payment security domain for a decade and has been constantly part of Research and Development around role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in protecting Payment Infrastructure from Sophisticated Cyber Attacks.

Jacques Soussana has over 25 years’ experience working in the payments ecosystem and has acted as nexo standards General Secretary since January 2019. Prior to this, Jacques worked for Oberthur Technologies (now IDEMIA) managing several aspects of the R&D team, before working for Ingenico. During this role, Jacques was responsible for W/W development and support applications and led the first nexo standards POI implementations in the field, before creating his own consulting company. As General Secretary, Jacques manages nexo’s day-to-day activities. This includes membership liaison, preparing and coordinating the Board of Directors and General Assembly meetings, while also playing an active role in many of nexo’s technical working groups.

Sunil Kulkarni is Oxigen’s Joint Managing Director and is in charge of Oxigen’s overall Business Operations, Business Development & Growth. His current focus is on growing revenues from business streams such as IOCL, Srei Sahaj, Insurance, Loyalty, and Smart Cities. Sunil is also the lead on Regulatory Compliances, and leads teams of Risk and Fraud, and is the Chairperson of the IS committee.

Abhishek Arun is member of the Paytm Payment Bank startup team focused on converting Cash to Digital Cash. He understands the business and product end of digital especially payments (wallet, payment gateway, UPI) & banking (product proposition & business development). He has been able to forge new, deepen existing relationships in the BFSI space for driving various initiatives of Paytm. Abhishek has diverse exposure in banking for Citibank N.A and RBL Bank Ltd; a domestic bank undergoing transformation (fastest growing small bank as per KPMG) specifically launching and scaling businesses and building teams.

As a Director for Business Development in the Chip Card and Security Division of Infineon Technologies AG, Ursula Schilling is responsible for Payment business development activities within Infineon. Currently Ursula handles the strategic setup and project management with regard to Payment applications. She has more than 20 years of experience in the smart card & EMV industry including business development activities for telecom applications & marketing activities for various other applications. In January 2019 she has joined the NFC Forum as vice chair for the Retail and Payment SIG. Before joining Infineon & Siemens Semiconductors Ursula held a marketing position within Wolford AG responsible for key accounts and worked for 4 years for British Airways.

Arvind Ronta is Visa’s Head of Product for India and South Asia. He is responsible for leading the product mandate for Visa in South Asia region across India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Maldives and Bhutan. Arvind is focused on setting the product strategy and driving Core and Digital product priorities for Visa and its clients in the region. His team mandate spans across Credit, Debit and Prepaid portfolio growth and digital innovations such as tokenization, QR, contactless, seamless authentication and real time payments among others. Arvind’s team manages the entire product lifecycle from initial concept and solutioning, piloting to full scale deployments and commercialisation in partnership with bank and non-bank partners.

Shantanu comes with over 15 years of strong product management experience in the Payments Industry. Currently, he is the product head for Identity Management & Security division of UL in South Asia. Prior to UL, he has worked in organizations such as National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), Ernst & Young (EY), Atos Worldline and Citibank at various capacities like Senior Consultant, Project Manager and Business Analyst. At NPCI, he led the National Common Mobility Card (NCMC) implementation for banks, card vendors, terminal vendors, transit operators and smart cities. Shantanu holds a Bachelor degree in Computer Engineering from University of Mumbai and has completed his MBA from University of Bradford, England.

Bertram currently heads Digital Payments Initiatives with Kotak Mahindra Bank where he is responsible for Digital Payments Strategy, Product Management & New Innovation. Prior to joining Kotak, Bertram has worked for more than a decade in various Payments organizations like Vodafone m-pesa, Tata Communications Payments Solutions and ATOM Technologies where he has worked in various capacities across Technology and Product Innovation roles. In his free time, Bertram is extremely passionate about working with startup accelerators and the Fintech ecosystem and is actively involved as a mentor.

Deep Agrawal is Head of Payments at PhonePe and oversees the entire Payments suite of offerings across the PhonePe ecosystem. Prior to this, Deep was Executive Vice President, Digital Banking at YES BANK where he was responsible for the YES BANK’s emerging payments area with special focus on launching innovative products catering to various segments of customers across Corporate and Retail use cases. He was responsible for creation of Go To Market Strategy and then launching and scaling products and businesses such as UPI, Bharat Bill Pay (BBPS), IMPS, Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS) to industry leading positions. He has worked on innovative programs such as YES SIMsePAY and YES Money which have contributed significantly to the Financial Inclusion agenda. These businesses have received several awards from notable entities such as Nasscom, Finnoviti, SKOCH, Golden Peacock, NPCI and MasterCard. He has represented YES BANK at Steering Committees of NPCI and at other industry forums such as IBA which help shape the entire digital payment ecosystem of the country.

Manish Chaturvedi is Head of SMB at Google Pay India. A veteran of more than two decades, Manish spent the better part of his career in diversified financial services, before joining Google. Passionate about levelling the playing field for small & medium businesses, Manish and his team will look to enable, engage and support SMBs chart the digital path to growing their businesses. Previously, he’s had an illustrious career with American Express, before a short stint in the startup world. He joined Google in 2016 as Head of Channel Sales for India. Born and educated in Darjeeling, Manish graduated from Hindu College, University of Delhi and did his post-graduation from FMS, Delhi University.

Rajesh has over twenty five years of experience in designing electronic payment systems, electronic cash transfers, digital financial services and electronic IDs. He has over twenty years of experience working in the Reserve Bank of India and Government of India designing electronic payment systems, electronic cash transfers, and digital financial services both products and systems, and Digital IDs to enable inclusive development. He is one of the key architects of Digital ID-based cash transfers in India, specifically the cooking gas subsidy scheme involving 150 million consumers (world’s largest cash transfer program). He was awarded the Golden Jubilee Scholarship of RBI and holds a Masters in Economics and also a Masters in International Development Policy from Duke University.

Geetika Raheja is a Director in the Financial Services Advisory practice at PwC India, with a special focus on banking and payments domain. She has over 11 years of consulting experience in advising clients in areas like strategy development, market entry, payments digitization, process design, business planning, market assessment and vendor selection among others. Her major clients include domestic and foreign banks, payment schemes, regulators, payments service providers and other financial services institutions. Some of her notable projects include strategy and vendor selection for card based transit payments, market assessment for Bharat Bill Payments System, payments bank launch, due diligence and synergy assessment for a large deal in the Indian payments domain, product diversification strategy for large payments service provider. Geetika also has experience in advising clients on regulatory aspects including payments bank and PPI applications to RBI. In the past, Geetika has worked with firms like EY, Cedar Management Consulting and TCS.

Shankar drives the strategic vision of MAXIMUS and is responsible for business growth. He works on developing customer engagement frameworks to ensure customer delight. His sensitivity to customer requirements, focus on being a responsible solution provider and interest in building trustworthy relationships with all stakeholders in the business ecosystem define the foundational values of the Company. The MAXIMUS customer engagement platforms comprise Omni Channel Switching, Remote Monitoring, Digital Payments, Transaction Reconciliation and Enterprise Management, which cater to Banking, Smart Cities & Transit, Telecom & Utilities, Retail, Microfinance and SME Verticals. He has had 20+ years of CXO-level experience in the financial services domain prior to turning an entrepreneur in 2007. He had held the positions of Director – Information Systems & Market Operations at Bombay Stock Exchange (10 years) and Managing Director of Inter-connected Stock Exchange of India (10 years). During these stints, Shankar played a pioneering role in ushering transformational changes, such as implementing the BOLT system at BSE, launching ISE’s subsidiary as cross-platform institutional trading and depository member.

Deepak Chandnani, Managing Director, Worldline South Asia and Middle East and Managing Director, MRL Posnet., has over 30 years of experience across a wide range of industries. Before joining Worldline in January 2014, Deepak was CEO, Obopay Inc., Redwood City, California. Prior to that, he worked in India as Managing Director, NCR Corporation India and in senior leadership positions in companies like Hindustan Unilever and Citibank. Deepak is best known as an entrepreneurial C-level executive who focuses on top and bottom line growth for both startups and established companies in mature and emerging markets. His experience has been across industries, product categories and market segments, with expertise in financial services and the emerging payments space. He is known for his competenceto define and deploy product, marketing and sales strategies to capture the potential of the organization. He is also recognized for his ability to maximize operational capability and align company resources with customer trends to generate sustainable results in key performance areas.

Navtej has over 20 years of experience across financial services in the area of Payment Solutions, Product & Channel Management, Retail Branch Banking & Sales. At Hitachi Payment Services, he is responsible for building the Digital Business, driving digital strategy and P& L growth. He has worked with organisations such as NPCI, HDFC Bank and Citibank. Before joining Hitachi Payment Services, he set-up BizStrat, a business & strategy consulting firm, advising various ecosystem participants on Product Strategy, Partnerships and Distribution structure.
Navtej is credited with creating and managing one of the most profitable Direct Payments Businesses with market leadership in key segments with HDFC Bank. With NPCI, he has played a pivotal role in defining and building the business development and marketing strategy including product development and setting up of sales process for a niche product – RuPay Platinum Debit Card. An industry representative on various RBI working groups and discussion forums, Navtej was also a member of the RuPay Steering Committee and was Chairman for the India chapter of Prepaid International Forum, UK.