Leadership

Senior professional with over 25 years experience in the Payments Industry with a focus on Digital Commerce, Fraud and Identity Management, Payment and related Regulation Compliance. With a special passion for Payment Innovation, New Payment Models such as Marketplaces and Fintechs and Growth and Expansion Strategy.

Founder and Principal Consultant of Payment Options Ltd, Associate Specialist Partner at Be Shaping the Future, Global Expansion and Partnership Advisor at Thunes as well as NED at Trust Payments and at PaySME.

Held a number of executive roles: at Datacash (MasterCard) as an executive board member heading Strategy, Innovation, Partnerships and Marketing, earlier at Global Collect (Worldline) as a VP in charge of Partnerships and Alliances and prior to that at CyberSource (Visa) as a Head of EMEA, developing European markets and widening the payment product portfolio. Five years at Microsoft driving payments in the EMEA region as well as providing strategic direction to the Management in the USA.

Earlier in the career ten years at Visa International, across variety of roles from Relationship Management to Business Development in new digital payment technologies (smart cards and 3D Secure); working with multinational banks, processors, vendors and professional forums within Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa region (CEMEA).

I am an Entrepreneurial tech enthusiast, IT executive & Board Advisor seasoned with two decades of global experience in Digital Technology, Business Transformation and Operations. I led the future of payments for VISA. Built and led the Digital CoE at Maersk. Planned and implemented the recovery from the most significant cyber incident in the industry and built a wealth management company as a Founder CTO.
I have been a trusted tech advisor to many other global firms to create programs for their Digital & Agile transformation.
A Global Payments, Banking & Digital executive, consulting Big 4’s, global banks and hedge funds. And a visiting lecturer to universities globally.

A few roles I played –
⁍ Chief Operating Officer – Leading strategic digital and technology initiatives at HSBC to build the future bank; managing a yearly budget of $300M. Streamlined the platform on AWS/EKS for a secure customer experience round the clock.
⁍ Digital Program Manager – Built a high-availability platform for Maersk using Cloud/Azure, Akamai and Akana. Ideated & delivered the first instant online shipment booking platform too. At VISA Europe, led all aspects of technology and a portfolio of regulatory changes to develop payment token service.
⁍ Strategic Technical Leader – Led teams across industries ranging from Finance, Banking, and Telecom to Logistics and the public sector. Currently, guiding a group of 700 at HSBC, spread across 38 countries. Also, I led a team at VISA Europe to design and deliver a technology roadmap.

Accolades –
⁍ Top 10 Global Fintech Leaders
⁍ Top 50 Global Digital thought Leaders
⁍ Payments Innovation Award at Singapore Fintech Festival
⁍ Co-Author of the world’s most comprehensive course in Payments – Digital Payments in Finance
⁍ Co-Authored – Building Digital Future ( Wiley’s), Applied Ethics in Digital World ( TBP)
⁍ CEO award at VISA Europe for Apple Pay & Tokenisation delivery
⁍ CTO award at Orange UK for ATG Implementation
• AWS Cloud Certified Professional • Certified Information Security Manager • SAFe Certified Agilist • Microsoft Certified MCSE • Cisco Certified CCNA

My technical expertise and operational understanding help me strategise priorities, improve product offerings, and bring out a digital business transformation. The secret is in building a relationship, developing communication and fostering collaboration.

As an industry expert and entrepreneur, advising, mentoring, investing in people’s ideas, and always open for a conversation! my portfolio companies span Fintech, Payments, Wealth, Deep tech, and Retail.

With his proven expertise within the payments industry, Bastien Latge held a number of different positions linked to Strategy, Product Development and Marketing in the areas of payment (Contact, Contactless, Mobile, Digital Security, Cards, Terminals, EMV® 3-D Secure, EMV Secure Remote Commerce, etc…), as well as other segments including Identity & Access Control and transportation.

In his previous position as Director of Technology, Bastien balanced his time between critical EMVCo priorities, with the oversight of technical developments and activities related to evaluations, testing and approvals; as well as relationship with other technical bodies

Former Director of a highly successful International Regulatory Consultancy, coupled with an “External Regulatory Specialist” for the hugely influential industry training body the ‘Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment’

Neil commands a wealth of knowledge and knowhow from within Financial Services, having provided ‘Conference Based’ and 1-1 training and advice Courses for delegates from the Singapore Monetary Authority, the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission, the Malta Financial Services Authority, and that of the DFSA – the independent regulator of financial services within Dubai, combined within here the UK.

According to former colleagues – Neil is on a crusade to transform under-achieving Compliance departments to convert outdated practices into “Complicit Outcomes”. Neil is committed to providing an outstanding real time Regulatory Advice Consultations, Risk and Compliance Training and Oversight, Risk Assessments and in-depth regulatory services to meet and exceed expectations.