Women in Payments

Kikelomo Lawal, chief legal officer and corporate secretary for Interac Corp., has helped to drive a seismic shift in how Interac works, which means an evolution of how payments happen for Canadians.

When Claire Gates joined the Paysafe Group two years ago, she was determined to demonstrate to payments industry leaders that bringing fresh ideas into fintech is gender agnostic.

Julie Pukas can blame her innate curiosity about people for her success in the payments industry, where she’s used her keen listening and networking skills to help solve one gnarly problem after another at large organizations.

Women are being driven from high-technology jobs by lingering male-dominated culture, and Christine Lee is calling on colleagues with high-profile positions to take responsibility for changing that.

One thing that excites Kim Bynan most about her job is seeing firsthand how new payments technology changes our everyday lives.

Walmart has a good grasp of where it sits among global retail giants, but its position among the financial services industry is still evolving under the guidance of Karla Allen, its senior director of payments innovation.

The past six years have been a whirlwind for King, who had no experience in the payments industry before becoming CEO of Featurespace, the fast-growing U.K. startup enabling banks to use machine-learning technology to block payment card fraud.

When it comes to finding the right talent for a position, Debra Tenenbaum knows a few things about how to set someone up for success — even when the needs of the business change.

In her 27 years working at Discover, Amy Parsons has always found herself in the right place at the right time. Or, more likely, decision makers at Discover have made a habit of putting Parsons right where they need her to tackle the hottest trends in payments.

In a career spanning four decades, Diane Faro has led one payment company after another through major transitions to successful outcomes.

Shubhi Rao is not the kind of person who looks to back down from a challenge. In deciding where she wanted to spend her career she did something no woman in her family had done before.

During her seven years at U.S. Bank, Kristy Carstensen has always been a creator. After all, she had to define what her job would be when she accepted what was an entirely new role at U.S. Bank five years ago, that of senior vice president and chief financial officer of the Payments Group.

Driving rapid consumer adoption of faster payments and the bank-run person-to-person payment network, Zelle, has been a core role for Early Warning’s Lou Anne Alexander over the past decade.

To successfully create new payment forms and uses, it’s critical to have a highly functioning team developing and promoting their ideas — something Colleen Taylor has fully embraced at Mastercard.

While a career in payments can allow a person to touch on many different aspects of payments services, PayPal's Prashanthi Ravanavarapu can say her focus has remained quite clear.

Over five years as CEO of WEX, Melissa Smith has led the international corporate payments company through several quarters of growth through organic expansion and acquisitions. One of her signature moves is the artful use of partnerships to extend WEX’s payments technology in the fuel card, health care and travel sectors.

Jenifer Swallow has been here before, feeling the excitement of being in in an industry that was about to change commerce forever.

Whenever Facebook adds something that more closely ties its network to shopping, service or payments, it has an immediate ripple effect. And Marketplace is becoming a major part of Facebook’s influence.

The payments industry is a complex ecosystem, one that Carolyn Homberger is happy to navigate. As president of global sales for ACI the past seven years, Homberger views the payments industry as akin to "a supersonic airline driven by some of the most skilled pilots in the business."

Minal Hasan, a lawyer turned prominent fintech venture capitalist, has strong views on founder dramas, cryptocurrency, and why banks need to step up their technology game.