Next-Generation Cards 2022

William Cheong is the Digital Payments Consultant, APAC with Entrust, responsible for business development, qualification, and acceleration of opportunities for Digital Card Solutions and Instant Financial Issuance in the Asia Pacific region. Being as a subject matter expert, William gives advices to sales executives to develop strategies for penetrating into prioritized markets. William has over 15 years of experience in the payments industry.

Joshua is a Lead Consultant at Kapronasia and has experience across banking, payments, and capital markets. Before Kapronasia, Joshua was with Morgan Stanley Equity Research in London and held strategy and business development roles with UK-based fintechs in the payments and asset management industries. Joshua graduated from the London Business School with a Master of Science in Financial Analysis and holds a BBA degree from BI Norwegian Business School.

Romain Zanolo is the Managing Director for the APAC Financial Institutions (FI) business at IDEMIA, and is currently based in Singapore. He oversees the overall management of the APAC FI business, P&L as well as regional corporate strategies. During his years at IDEMIA, Romain has led the successful sales and implementation of several projects with banks and fintechs alike. On top of Romain’s expertise in the payment industry, he has an extensive experience in corporate financial advisory, including financial modeling, transaction support and strategic consulting.

Antonio D'Albore is VP Business Development APAC at Zwipe, he is responsible for all business development activities in the Asia Pacific region with card manufacturers, issuers and business partners. He is a smartcard expert with more than 25 years’ experience in the business. Prior to Zwipe he was the author of “The Rise of Biometric Cards”, the first and only independent paper, and widely respected in the industry, on the subject of smart cards with embedded fingerprint sensors. During the APSCA Powered and Next-Generation Cards 2018 in Singapore, he held a Biometric Smart Cards 101 training session.

Bhavana Ravindran is currently the Head of Visa Developer Platform for Visa in Asia Pacific. In this role, Bhavana helps clients execute their digital roadmap while building awareness and driving usage for Visa’s digital capabilities in payments and security. Bhavana is responsible for product management, strategy, and commercialization of digital solutions available as easily consumable APIs via the Developer Platform.

Lauren Bayley is le the Head of Risk and Authentication Solutions for Visa in Asia Pacific. In this role, Lauren is responsible for the strategy, commercialization, sales and support for a suite of products and programs that leverage Visa’s Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning capabilities to detect and prevent fraud for authentication and authorisation.

Gautam Pande manages the Mastercard Identity Check Program for Asia Pacific region. He has 16+ years of experience in managing consumer payment products. In his current role, he works with the payment ecosystem to use EMV 3DS authentication across a range of uses cases to simplify consumer verification & enable secure online payment flows.

Cyril Lalo is a serial entrepreneur and inventor, and a pioneer in smartcard technology. He has over 25 years of experience in the payment industry, including as founder of Ellipse. Prior to Ellipse, Lalo served as Worldwide Head of Payment Indirect Sales at IDEMIA. Lalo also holds patents for 18 groundbreaking payment technologies. He is committed to creating new value and pushing the payment industry to meet the challenges of the ever-evolving digital sphere.

Thomas Decker has over 25 years of experience in the card industry. He started his career in the RFID industry with SMARTRAC, the leading inlay and tag manufacturer, in 2003. During this time, he has served in broad spectrum of sales and business development related functions.

In April 2017 SMARTRAC’s cards & ID document related divisions were acquired by French company LINXENS. Within LINXENS Thomas acts as VP Product Marketing for LINXENS banking segment. His segment covers EMV-Tape & Modules, Inlays, Dual-Interface Technologies, as well as a wide range of Next-Gen bank-card products, such as biometrics, dCVx or new eco-friendly materials.

Thomas holds a Master degree in Engineering from the University of Applied Science in Munich.

Atul is the Head of Business for Asia and Australia for CompoSecure. He has more than 15 years of experience in smart card industries, working in leadership positions with market leaders, such as Oberthur, Idemia and DZ cards. He has been instrumental in establishing subcontinent operations in India for Oberthur and leading the innovations portfolio for Idemia. He has in-depth knowledge in the payment, telecom and ID verticals in the APAC region. His core expertise is scaling startups and growing established corporations.

Mona El Baz is the Group Marketing and Communications Director of Toppan Gravity based at its UAE headquarters. She is responsible for developing the company's marketing and communication strategy as well as expanding brand recognition globally. As a dynamic industry professional with a successful and eventful career spanning over 15 years, Mona is focused on driving the company's vision of securing a fast-moving world through next-generation virtual and physical security solutions. She accomplishes this through building marketing and communication programs and thought leadership aimed at promoting Toppan Gravity Group's strategic initiatives and state-of-the-art products. Mona holds a Bachelor of Business degree from the University of Applied Science in Bremen, Germany and a Bachelor of Business Management with Honors degree from the University of Westminster in London, UK.

Farouk works at Giesecke+Devrient as Sales Director and Distribution in Southeast Asia region, including Bangladesh in e-Payments sector. He has 20 years of experience in the smart cards and digital payments industry. He works closely with global teams from product management, strategy and marketing to serve banking and finance sector customers via direct and distribution channels with innovative and sustainable products, digital issuance services, and digital payments solutions. He is representing Smart Payment Association to speak about Eco-friendly payment cards: Putting Sustainability at the Heart of Payment.