Speakers and panellists

Alexandra Jour-Schroeder is Deputy Director General at the European Commission´s Directorate-General for Financial Services, Financial Market and Capital Markets Union since March 2021. Prior to that she was Acting Deputy Director General for Justice and consumers and Director for Criminal Justice. Ms Jour-Schroeder joined the European Commission in 1996 and held different positions inter alia in competition, industry, justice and consumer policies. Between 1997 and 2007 she was a member of Cabinet of several European Commissioners and of Vice-President Verheugen.
Before joining the European Commission, Alexandra Jour-Schroder worked for the German Ministry of Economic Affairs. She has a graduate in law.

Arun Tharmarajah is Head of European Banking & Payments at Wise. Arun leads Wise's payment infrastructure and financial institution partnership growth enabling Wise to be one of the leading providers of personal and SME cross border payments companies in Europe. He is responsible for both improving Wise's payment capabilities in Europe as well as leading expansion efforts into new markets. Previous to his time at Wise, Arun worked in the Financial Institutions team at Barclays.

Barbara is the Head of Enterprise Business Development at Stripe. She leads the revenue growth strategy and helps enterprise customers grow their businesses. Barbara is also the CEO of STEL. Previously, she led sales operations, planning, and insights for Stripe GTM. Before that, she was a Partner at McKinsey & Company, where she assisted global consumer-facing companies in transforming and growing their businesses, focusing on commercial strategy and Digital and Analytics transformation. Barbara is a chartered engineer and an MBA graduate.

Brian Gahan serves as Managing Director for Europe at Kraken, a leading cryptocurrency exchange. In this role, he is responsible for overseeing Kraken’s European operations, including its regulated entities and services across the continent. His key responsibilities encompass managing both fiat and crypto operations, ensuring compliance with regional regulations, and driving the company’s growth strategy in Europe. Prior to joining Kraken in 2022, Gahan built a solid foundation in traditional finance. He began his career at KPMG,
followed by several roles at Morgan Stanley. Under Gahan’s European leadership, Kraken has achieved significant milestones, including securing a number of Virtual Asset Service Provider registrations (VASPs) across the continent, and obtaining an Electric Money Institution (EMI) license from the Irish Central Bank (CBI).

Côme Prost-Boucle is the country manager France of Coinbase, leading product, growth and regulatory expansion in this market. For several years, he has been involved in the expansion and international influence of the French web3 ecosystem, co-founding NFT Paris in 2021. This is now Europe's biggest event on these technologies, attracting over 18,000 people a year from all over the world, and bringing together blockchain, web3 communities, major brands and traditional financial institutions. Prior to this entrepreneurial venture, Côme has spent his career in a variety of positions linked to technological innovations and their impact on our daily lives, working in fintech, venture capital and innovation consulting. He studied at HEC Paris, where he completed a joint master's degree in entrepreneurship with Ecole Polytechnique.

Eric Ducoulombier is, since 1 January 2019, Head of the Retail and Payments Unit in DG FISMA. Eric joined the European Commission in 1992, after having worked a few years in the private sector (consulting, law firm…). He holds a Master Degree in European Law.

Evelien Witlox is the program director in charge of the Digital Euro project of the ECB. She has extensive managerial experience in the payments industry, amongst others as Global Head of Payments within ING and General Director Products and Innovation within equensWorldline. She has been board member of both European Payment Council and European Automated Clearing House Association. She has driven the roll out and implementation of EMV (Europay, Mastercard, Visa), Instant Payments and PSD2 on an European level in her respective companies. She has a master’s degree from the Technical University of Eindhoven and from Tilburg University.

Fabrice Borsello is the Chief Risk Officer (CRO) and Head of EMEA compliance for PayPal Europe. Fabrice is responsible for second line oversight of PayPal Europe’s Risk and Compliance Management Program, which includes oversight for PayPal’s fraud prevention framework. In this role, Fabrice has a leading role in formulating compliance and risk policies supporting PayPal’s strategic initiatives in a fast-changing international regulatory environment. Fabrice is an international compliance and risk executive with 27 years of combined financial crime compliance, markets compliance and with conduct and business risk expertise in the financial services industry.

Giorgio Andreoli is the Director General of the European Payments Council (EPC). He has extensive professional experience in digital financial solutions and innovative services, spanning multiple industries and executive roles.
For over 15 years he has been working in telco sector, eventually serving as Director of Strategic Marketing at Ericsson South-East Europe, where he contributed to starting up the first mobile money program.
Later, for over ten years, he served as a Managing Director at Accenture, working on digital finance, payments and open banking projects for Italian and European clients.
Before joining the EPC, Giorgio was working at the European Central Bank (ECB) on the Digital Euro project.

John is a qualified lawyer and payments expert with 15 years of experience advising global, customer-focused organizations on legal, regulatory, and compliance matters. John has led transformative initiatives to design and implement compliance programs for cross-border payments, e-money, and open banking solutions across the UK and EU.
Currently, John serves as Chief Legal and Compliance Officer at Banked, a series A Open Banking provider undergoing rapid global expansion. Prior to Banked, John was Global Director of Legal & Compliance at PPRO Group where he was instrumental in shaping the company’s compliance strategies to support its innovative payment solutions and international growth. He also currently serves as the appointed Chairman of the EMA. He is deeply invested in the evolution of Open Banking and the payments industry and advocates for balanced, innovation-driven regulatory frameworks that foster sustainable growth and industry advancement.

Jon is a Co-founder and Chairman of Monerium, the first company to issue fiat onchain. Prior to this, he served as the Vice Chairman and Chairman of the Icelandic Central Bank's Supervisory Board from 2013 to 2017. He was appointed to reinstate the economy after the Icelandic financial crisis. Jon has also been involved in the cryptocurrency industry since 2012. Back then he developed a model to estimate the power consumption and profitability of mining Bitcoin. When Ethereum was launched, he recognized its potential to revolutionise finance and co-founded Monerium after six months of research. Throughout his career, Jon has held leadership positions in various financial, innovation, and IT companies. Jon holds a Ph.D. degree in Economics and a master's degree in engineering. He is a former adjunct professor at Reykjavik University and lectured at the University of Iceland in the economics and engineering departments. Additionally, Jon was a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York. Fun fact: Jon wrote the all time most read paper on “Journal of Applied Economics”.

Kasia Said Nagy, Head of Financial Crime operation at Revolut Bank Europe. Kasia is an experienced professional who currently leads FinCrime first line of defence at Revolut Bank Europe and oversees FinCrime products and services. In her current role she is dedicated to Revolut’s efforts to lead an industry-wide discussion on how financial services should handle challenges and remain at the forefront of financial crime prevention and continues to provide a safe and secure platform for Revout Customers. On Europe level she steers the FinCrime angle of launching new local entities and delivering innovative and well designed solutions for +30 mln retail clients.

Maria is advisor to Deputy Minister of Finance of Poland, previously working in an equivalent position at the Czech Ministry. Prior to joining the public sector, she was advocating for pan-European digital finance ecosystem. Maria held the position of the President of the European Digital Finance Association, a trade association of national fintech associations in Europe, which she helped establish in 2020. Before that she worked as Executive Director at the Czech Fintech Association and Deputy Executive Director at the Aspen Institute Central Europe.

A graduate in political sciences and European studies in Poland and Germany, Maria previously also worked in Brussels for the Secretariat General of the Council of the EU.

Matthew is Policy Director for Europe at Ripple, the leading provider of digital assets infrastructure to businesses. He is passionate about new technologies and believes that well-designed regulation plays a key role in supporting sustainable innovation. Matthew previously worked at the Bank of England, where he led the payments policy team working on innovations such as stablecoins and distributed ledger technology. Prior to that he held a number of senior policy roles at the Bank of England and was seconded to NatWest Bank's global treasury. He has a PhD in Finance from Bayes Business School and has authored numerous papers and blogs on financial services policy topics.  He serves on the Board of Blockchain for Europe and the advisory council of the Digital Pound Foundation.

Paul Foster is the Director of Global Payment Partnerships at GoCardless. His team is responsible for building and maintaining the global account-to-account payments infrastructure, which enables GoCardless to provide its best-in-class merchant proposition. Paul has specialised in banking and payments for over 15 years having previously worked in a number of roles within the Royal Bank of Scotland group. Paul is currently a member of various industry expert working groups related to Open Banking and digital payments.

Pietro Candela is the General Manager of Alipay+ in Europe, operated by Ant International, within Ant Group. Before Ant Group, Pietro was partner of EY within the EMEIA Advisory Center, focusing on innovation and customer growth strategies. Pietro was also Partner at Booz & Company (aka Strategy&), within the European Communication Media & Technology practice, leading the Digital Business & Technology practice in Italy. He also served, as Independent Board Member, an Italian Financial Institution specialized in Mobile and Digital payments. As adjunct professor at Luiss University, Pietro led the Communication Economics course in 2005-2007. Piero holds a degree in Electronics Engineering and an MBA from the Polytechnic of Milan. Since 2016, Pietro Candela has been serving Alipay, operated by Ant Group, the world's largest mobile payment platform, leading the development of the Alipay+ in Europe. Alipay+ is an open and global solution aimed at connecting major financial institutions, international brands and retailers, marketing agencies and service providers and helping them engage and sell to cross-border shoppers and travellers, through mobile payments, targeted marketing and lifestyle services. Since 2019, Pietro also sits in the board of Casta Diva Group, a leading communication company listed on the Milan AIM stock exchange, present in 14 branches all over the world.

Rok Žvelc, LLM (Saarbrücken), started his career in 2006 at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Slovenia. He joined the European Commission in 2008, where he worked as a legal and policy officer on various files, including external relations of the EU, trade and environment and enforcement of EU environmental law. In 2016, he joined the Directorate-General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union (DG FISMA), where he was first in charge of free movement of capital and investment protection. Since 2020, he has been working in the Digital Finance Unit on the legal frameworks for crypto-assets and digital euro.

Thaer Sabri is founder and CEO of the Electronic Money Association, the European trade body for the e-money industry, and managing director of payments consultancy Flawless Money. He is also senior partner of the payments specialist law firm FM Legal.
He has more than 20 years’ experience in the electronic money and innovative payments industry. He is a qualified solicitor in England & Wales and is also an engineering graduate, and postgraduate. He has represented the e-money industry in the negotiation of PSD1, EMD2, PSD2, 3MLD, 4MLD and 5MLD.
Thaer is additionally a member of the Board of the European Payments Council (EPC), a member of the EBA Banking Stakeholder Group, a member of the European Commission Payment Services Market Experts Group, a member of the UK Payments Strategy Forum, of the UK Open Banking Steering Committee, and participates in working groups of the Euro Retail Payments Board (ERPB).

William leads Payments Acceptance for Amazon the EU/UK. In his role, he owns available payment methods, their customer experience, costs, compliance, as well as new payment methods enablement to generate customer access and engagement on Amazon. William and his team are actively working with the payments supply chain to bring the customers’ needs and merchants’ views to the table, whether it is with partners or banks and regulators, with a goal to increase customers’ choice and trust in Amazon checkout.