John has been highly influential in the development of retail payments for more than 30 years. He was one of the driving forces behind the phenomenal growth of Visa in a 17-year career where he was Executive Vice President and latterly ran the European processing business. He also spent 5 years working with First Data in global strategy and business development roles. He is an adviser to Helios Investment Partners, the major African private equity fund and is a Director of Interswitch in West Africa and Fawry in Egypt. He also works with several leading industry players and earlier stage companies. He was Chairman of Ixaris for 5 years. He has advised national payment schemes in 5 continents and served 3 years as a Market Expert advising the European Commission on card payments. He is the organiser of the Global Payments Innovation Jury, a prestigious group of 70 industry leading CEO’s, that convenes every 2 years to look at the state of innovation in the payments sector.