Ryan McHugh is a Vice President and Specialist Product Manager at BNY Mellon for Immediate Payments. In his current role, Ryan is responsible for our strategy and development of faster payment solutions such as The Clearing Houses Real-Time Payments, The Federal Reserve’s FedNow Service, and Tokenized Payments® now available with Zelle®.Prior to joining the Immediate Payments group, Ryan worked as an analyst for Global Payments in BNY Mellon’s Treasury Services department. Mr. McHugh was in charge of preparing financial reports, reviewing performance trends and providing complex financial accounting to assist management in measuring and evaluating Global Payments product performance.
Mr. McHugh has been with BNY Mellon for over fifteen years. He graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in Economics.

As the Head of Product and Strategy, Nicole creates and executes integrated Business to Business payment strategies through both organic and in-organic growth opportunities. She also manages a diverse product portfolio that supports both Middle and Large Market customers which is complemented with the ideation and commercialization of new solutions. In addition, Nicole leads teams that focus on Lead Generation and Revenue Optimization strategies to deepen relationships with customers.
Prior to joining U.S. Bank, Nicole managed Global Product and Marketing at WEX Inc. leading the globalization of its commercial card product, building international brand awareness, creating lead generation strategies to sustain growth, and developing retention strategies for existing customers.
Nicole also worked at First Annapolis Consulting assisting with the management of client engagements which include strategy development for major card associations, merchant services providers, and banks; support on payments-oriented M&A transactions; and analysis on payments trends for industry-leading companies in Europe, India, Mexico, Canada, and the U.S.
Nicole earned a BBA from the University of Georgia and a MBA from the University of Maryland.

Lia Cao is a Managing Director, Head of Embedded Finance & Solutions at J.P. Morgan Payments in the Corporate and Investment Bank (CIB). In this role, Lia leads a global product and solutioning team to build and deliver a full suite of innovative and scalable embedded finance products, industry-tailored payment solutions and value-added services that power our clients to transform commerce experiences for their ecosystem participants. The embedded finance product suite ranges from embedded payments, lending to banking solutions. Value-added services include trust & safety and data & analytics. And the industry solutions cover healthcare payment solutions, mobility payment solutions, gaming and more.Prior to this role, Lia co-led the global corporate and e-commerce sales and solutions teams that covered over 2,000 clients globally. The team delivers integrated solutions that meet complex client needs, incorporating all aspects of the firm’s holistic payments offering: Treasury Services, FX, Merchant Acquiring, Commercial Card and Trade.Prior to that, Lia was the Head of Wholesale Payments Solutions and North America Head of Treasury Services (TS) Corporate Sales at J.P. Morgan. In her solutions role, Lia was responsible for the overall global solution strategy to maximize commercialization of the firm’s capabilities with some of our largest and most strategic global clients. In her sales role, Lia led the NA TS Corporate Sales team across all industry segments, cover over 700 NA headquartered large corporations.Previously, Lia held various executive roles including the Head of Business Transformation for Treasury Services and Head of CIB Strategy in the Americas. Lia joined J.P. Morgan in 2011 in the Corporate Strategy Group and was responsible for leading many cross line of business initiatives.Prior to joining J.P. Morgan, Lia worked as an Associate Principal in McKinsey & Company, a leading global management consulting firm. She spent more than five years at McKinsey, serving a wide range of banking and capital markets clients.Lia holds a Ph.D Degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Urban Economics and Real Estate Finance. She holds Bachelor and Master Degrees from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.

Responsible for BBVA Commercial Cards solutions strategy enabling local, regional and global enterprises to homogeneously manage the expenses made with commercial cards in Europe & Latam. Sergio has 15+ years experience in Payments Systems, first in Spain (consumer issuing, acquiring and innovation) and since 2012 in global positions focused on commercial cards. Sergio has a Master Degree in Computer Science from Deusto University (Spain) and Aalborg University (Denmark). He also has a Executive MBA from Esade Business School (Spain).

Robin is in charge of product strategy, partnerships, and commercialization, for Citi’s B2B Payments offering. He joined Citi at the start of 2020, as part of the Commercial Cards Division within Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions.

Robin has over 10 years of experience across multiple verticals of the Payments industry, including eCommerce, Purchasing and T&E. He has worked closely with the five main Payment Networks, supporting global credit, prepaid, and multi-currency programs.

Prior to joining Citi, Robin led the Payments division at Sabre, where he supported large travel intermediaries in optimizing cross-border supplier payments. He also held various Consulting positions across the Supply Chain, IT, and Utilities spaces, where he drove global M&A activities, and focused on optimizing top & bottom-line revenue for multinational corporations.

Robin holds a Master’s in Engineering from the University of Oxford. He is located in London, UK.

Ray joined Webster Bank in July 2023 as Managing Director, Enterprise Payments and currently leads Product Management for Commercial Card. Ray oversees several disciplines to drive competitive differentiation including strategy, innovation, partnership development and most importantly, customer experience for its Commercial Banking customers. Previously, Ray held similar roles at Citizens Bank and prior to that, led Commercial Products at Mastercard in North America managing Product development and management initiatives for the small business, mid-market, large market and public-sector segments. Ray was charged with developing a differentiated product strategy across a host of Commercial Card assets. In addition, Ray also led Mastercard’s relationships with a number of issuers including J P Morgan, WEX, HSBC, and Citizens spanning credit, debit, prepaid, cobrand, and commercial card portfolios. Ray lives in Connecticut with his wife and 2 daughters.

Andrew Jamison is the CEO and Co-Founder of Extend. Extend makes innovative payment solutions accessible through trusted bank partners, setting a new standard for credit card services.

Prior to Extend, Andrew was the head of B2B Corporate Payments Products at American Express with a mandate to drive digital payment innovation and adoption. Over the course of six years, he doubled B2B payment volumes by launching and scaling new capabilities and platforms. Prior to American Express, Andrew spent eight years managing global SAP deployments for large multinational corporations. He earned an MBA from INSEAD.

As President/GM of BillGO’s Biller Solutions Division, Cindy O’Neill has responsibility for the development and growth of the BillGO Exchange, which provides billers/suppliers access to the BillGO payments network, removing the friction associated with payment acceptance. Prior to joining BillGO, Ms O’Neill was the President of Priority Commercial Payments, responsible for architecting and delivering the Commercial Payments Exchange (CPX)® integrated payables platform and leading the Managed Services business. Ms. O’Neill spent 17 years in treasury management banking, holding leadership positions at Wells Fargo and Bank of America. Capitalizing on her deep understanding of the challenges large financial intuitions struggled with serving their global treasury clients, VISA appointed her as its Head of Global Product Management and Region Head of U.S. Commercial business. After 5 years at VISA, Ms. O’Neill transitioned to become EVP and General Manager at Electronic Funds Source leading the growth of its Commercial Payments business through its 2016 sale to Wright Express.
Ms. O’Neill has a Bachelors of Science degree from the University of Southern California and an Executive Certification from the Columbia Business School.

Dean Leavitt is the founder and CEO of Boost Payment Solutions, the only acquirer in the United States focused exclusively on the business-to-business electronic payments. Dean is a well-respected veteran of the electronic payments industry with nearly 25 years of experience in various leadership roles at both public and private companies. Dean has received numerous awards from his industry peers and is often asked to speak at industry events. Dean currently serves on the advisory board of Commercial Payments International, having previously served two terms on the board of directors of the Electronic Transaction Association. Dean holds a B.A. with high honors from Emory University, where he served on the college’s Alumni Board of Trustees from 2002-2008.

Elena Whisler is Senior Vice President of Sales and Relationship Management at The Clearing House. Elena is currently responsible for overseeing the customer relationship, sales and marketing teams to manage and expand its client base across The Clearing House’s core payments products (RTP® network, CHIPS, ACH and check image exchange). Current priorities include growing the RTP network across the US financial system participants and evolving the customer engagement model for all TCH Products.

Prior to joining The Clearing House, she held regional and global product management positions at FIS, Clear2Pay and Fiserv as well as working at the Federal Reserve Bank within the Retail Product Office and Monetary Policy Divisions working on cross-border activities and economic policy in Latin America.

Elena has served on multiple industry councils such as the Board of Directors for BAFT (Banking Association for Finance and Trade) and the NACHA Alliance. She also currently serves on the Women in Payments Advisory Board as well as the Girls on the Run Central Ohio Board.

Frank founded Windward Strategy in 2020 to provide strategy consulting and M&A advisory in B2B payments. Windward supports clients in achieving their launch, growth, optimization, and implementation objectives.

Greg Toussaint is a Director in Edgar, Dunn & Company (EDC) Paris office with over 15 years of consulting experience with EDC in business strategy for clients in Asia, Europe, North and South America. Greg has worked in EDC London’s, Sydney’s and Paris’ offices and developed global perspectives on payments. Within EDC, Greg leads EDC’s B2B and Commercial Payments Practice and co-leads EDC’s Travel Payments Practice globally, working on strategy topics for all actors in the travel and B2B payments value chain (e.g. travel agents, travel providers, corporates, issuers, acquirers, payment schemes and B2B platforms). Greg recently published a white paper on 7 best practices for corporates and payment provides to successfully launch new corporate payment programmes. Outside of work, Grégoire plays the saxophone and loves baking cakes.

Patrick chairs the ‘European Network of Business Travel Association’, which is a non-for-profit membership organization.Patrick is active as independent consultant, board member, business angel, and investor in the travel & payments industry. Until 2019 Patrick was CEO at Lufthansa AirPlus where he headed their Global expansion strategy and developed AirPlus into one of the leading commercial card issuers. Earlier he led Visa Germany. In his career he worked in the USA, UK and Germany. 2017 and 2022 Patrick was named one of the ‘25 most influential’ by Business Travel News.

Steve is the Director of Mercator Advisory Group’s Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service. He has over 12 years of experience in banking and payments research and is an expert on commercial payments, including cards and integrated payables, advising banks and fintech companies on strategy across product, marketing and IT. Before joining Mercator, Steve spent 6 years with CEB TowerGroup as a Research Director in the commercial banking practice. Steve’s specialty areas include transaction banking, payments/payables, receivables, trade services and lifecycle management across business segments and channels. Before joining CEB, Steve spent more than 20 years with Citibank in a variety of senior positions covering consumer, internet, and corporate banking. Roles in the consumer cards group spanned credit operations, fraud policy, marketing, and product development. He was a pioneering member of e-Citi. Upon joining the Citi Transaction Services division, he oversaw the commercial cards European business expansion. Later, in Hong Kong, as part of the regional transaction banking team, he built Citibank’s Asia-Pacific commercial cards startup business covering Asia Pacific. Steve then became the North America market manager for Citi commercial cards. Steve received an M.B.A. from St. John’s University and a B.S. from CUNY’s John Jay College.

Mr. Aron is Deloitte’s Global and U.S. Payments Leader He has over 27 years of experience, specializing in providing business strategy, operations and technology solutions to payments clients. His focus areas include corporate payments, credit and debit cards, alternative payments, online lending, payment networks and treasury management with expertise in the development and rollout of new business lines, products, services and associated operating models both in the U.S. and Internationally. Mr. Aron has partnered with financial institutions, merchants, networks and FinTech payments providers to develop new payments-related product and service strategies using emerging technologies or new acquisitions. Mr. Aron has been a guest speaker at numerous industry conferences and client board and advisory meetings in subjects around the world. Mr. Aron has a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Matt is a Partner at Bain Capital Ventures in New York City and focuses on investments in financial technology. He sees a huge amount of revenue, profit and market cap shifting from regulated financial institutions to entrepreneur-led insurgents, across payments, lending, capital markets, real estate and insurance. More ramblings on these topics can be found at https://medium.com/@mattcharris. Matt started his investing career at Bain Capital private equity in 1995, having worked previously at Bain & Company, and attended Williams College, where he majored in political economy (with a minor in rugby). In 2000, Matt founded Village Ventures, which he ran for 12 years and where he focused on early-stage fintech investing. In 2012 he rejoined Bain Capital Ventures.

Outside of work, Matt enjoys spending any free moments with his wife, Jessica, and their six children. Matt is the former Chair of the Board of the Williamstown Theatre Festival, a regional theater associated with Williams College. He is also a board member at Endeavor, an organization leading the global movement to catalyze long-term economic growth by selecting, mentoring and accelerating the best high-impact entrepreneurs around the world, as well as the boards of Greater NY and the Partnership Fund for New York City. He is obsessed with military history, and some day will write a book connecting the strategy and tactics of insurgency with what he has learned about entrepreneurship.

Vivek Jha is a Senior Vice President at Truist and is responsible for all aspects of the Commercial Card business that includes in-hand products & solutions set, commercial card virtual payments offerings, supplier onboarding, relationship management, rebate management, client onboarding & servicing, and overall strategy for the business to support middle market, large corporate and public sector Commercial Card customers. Vivek has been at Truist (through the BB&T & SunTrust merger) since 2018 where he briefly was the head of Treasury Solutions Product as well. He has played many roles in the payments industry for close to three decades as a developer, solutions architect, technology leader, management consultant, and senior advisor at some of the largest institutions globally. Vivek holds an engineering degree in Computer Science and M.B.A. Besides payments, he is passionate about food and photography and lives in Atlanta, GA.

Denika Torres is a Director within Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions at Citi based in New York. Denika leads strategy development, business management and market positioning for clients across the corporate, financial institution and public sector verticals as Global Head of Business & Market Management for the Global Commercial Cards division. In this capacity, she is also the ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) Lead for Global Commercial Cards and oversees the sustainability agenda and partnership strategy for both T&E and B2B segments. Denika is a member of the Treasury and Trade Solutions ESG Steering Committee.

Denika has held strategy and product management roles within Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS), Securities and Fund Services (SFS), and Private Equity Groups where she has led key business transformation initiatives, deal solutioning for across multiple verticals in the payments industry in the non-profit & corporate sectors, and successfully launched initiatives to enable Citi to secure flows from emerging segments and verticals.

Prior to joining Citi in 2011, Denika supported investment climate, innovation, and private sector competitiveness in Latin America and the Caribbean region at The World Bank Group. Denika holds an MIA from Columbia University in International Finance and an MPP in Economic Policy from the National University of Singapore. She serves as a Board Member for the Gantry Group and lives in Connecticut.

Sayantan Chakraborty leads the FX Payments Products for the Bank. In this role, he oversees the existing products & solutions and also leads all product development & innovation initiatives globally.

Sayantan joined the firm in 2021 from U.S. Bank where he was Head of
Product Management & Solutions Engineering for their Global Treasury Management business.  In this role, Sayantan led his organization in being the first of two Banks to launch Real Time Payments in the United States. Sayantan was also responsible for launching several award winning new products during his tenure.

Prior to joining U.S. Bank, Sayantan spent nearly 15 years at Citibank across India and the United States in a variety of leadership roles. In his last role at Citi, he served as the North America Head of Client Implementations with
responsibility for onboarding new business across Cash Management, FX Payments Commercial Cards and Trade franchises. In previous roles, he managed the Payments business for North America including all of domestic and cross border and FX payments products.

Sayantan has previously served on the board of NACHA and has held advisory roles across many industry bodies.

Sayantan holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow and did his undergraduate training in Mechanical Engineering.

Zach Lynn overseas Business Intelligence, Analytics and Sales Operations for Boost Payment Solutions. In this role he designs and distributes all internal and external business management reporting and has built tools for creating a data-driven customer sales and management experience. The Sales Operations team manages all aspects of lead analysis, distribution, and reporting.

Since 2006 Zach has worked in the Payments industry in various capacities. He began his career at First Annapolis Consulting, a management consulting firm focused on the payments industry. Zach was with Bank of America Merchant Services for seven years where he worked on the Corporate Strategy team and had roles overseeing Emerging Products, Third Party VAR Expansion, and led the organization’s international expansion into the Canadian market. Zach also worked at TransFirst, TSYS, and Global Payments in various capacities, including leading Sales Operations, Pricing, and most recently was VP of Business Intelligence & Analytics at Global Payments.

Zach has undergraduate degrees from the University of Maryland in Finance, International Business, and Logistics & Supply Chain Management and an MBA from Wake Forest University. He currently splits his time between Charlotte, NC and Miami, FL with his wife and two dogs.

David Blaha is a 30-year payments executive and the Chief Revenue Officer at Extend. Prior to Extend, David worked with Fin-techs and start-ups, Advising on funding and launch. Before this, he was VP \ General Manager, American Express. At Amex, he worked across consumer and corporate businesses, leading executive level sales, operations, and account teams. David’s history of driving exceptional growth and creating highly engaged teams earned him election into the American Express Hall of Fame in 2015.

Sanjib is an industry expert and thought leader within the Banking, Payments, and Fintech industry and has spent over 20 years in the field. Helped various clients develop an enterprise and retail payments platform, and successfully worked with organizations across the payments value chain, including retail banks, payment providers/issuers, acquirers, payment networks, PE firms, and retailers across various industry market verticals.
Advised a variety of clients on the design & integration of new payment product offerings (e.g., BaaS, Zelle, Payfac, Web 3.0 payments enablement, etc.), helping them execute the performance improvement initiatives spanning Fit-for growth, Capability driven strategy, Go-to-market plan, Tech & Ops transformation, Analytical insights on latest business trends, and growth & revenue generating synergies. Helped with several pre- and post-acquisition activities, including identifying and developing an acquisition target list, valuation and deal modeling, due diligence, and integration planning and execution post-close.
Having worked both in industry and Big 4 management consulting Sanjib’s skillset in client delivery traverses strategic planning, fit-for-purpose capability-driven strategy, Go-to-Market strategy, product development, the entire software delivery process, and improving production settings.

Eric has a long history in the payments industry, serving in both Business Development and Product Management roles across Bank of America, JP Morgan, AirPlus, American Express and Citibank. His current focus is on leading efforts to provide card -based payment applications across ecommerce and embedded finance verticals. Eric holds a bachelor’s degree from St. Mary’s College of California and an MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management. He’s a dual citizen of both the U.S. and the U.K. and worked extensively in both the North America and EMEA regions.

David Trecker is Senior Vice President of Business to Business (B2B) Payments at Mastercard. Responsibilities include leading In Control, Mastercard’s virtual card platform, and Track Business Payment Service, Mastercard’s multi-rail open-loop network to simplify and automate B2B payments. Prior to joining Mastercard, David held diverse leadership positions in Transaction Banking over 15 years. Most recently he was Supply Chain Finance Head at Bank of America; Before that, Global Venture Capital Lead for Citi Treasury & Trade Solutions. David is a member of the Commercial Payments International Global Advisory Board and an active contributor to the Global Supply Chain Finance Forum, a collaboration of leading industry associations to develop, publish and champion a set of commonly agreed market standards. David holds a Bachelor of Science in finance and legal studies from Indiana University and a Masters of Business Administration from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is based out of Mastercard’s world headquarters in Purchase, New York.

Brooke DiNatale leads the European Commercial Solutions team for Mastercard, focused on Corporate products and sales. She is responsible for the development, launch and scale of T&E and B2B multi-rail payment solutions in the region. Brooke is based in London and a member of the Commercial Payments International European Advisory Board.
Prior to joining Mastercard, Brooke spent 10 years at American Express in London and NYC. Most recently she led the development and management of international loyalty solutions for Corporate Products. Brooke also held roles in global business transformation and global distribution partnerships with a focus on banks and travel agencies. She was previously director of finance for a satellite media company and spent several years as an investment banker.

Paul Krumholz is the HSBC US Head of Product Management, NA Commercial Cards. Prior to joining HSBC in 2019, Paul held similar roles for Citi starting in 2012. As well as a background in B2B products such as Purchasing Card and Virtual Card, he has expertise in supplier enablement/supplier enrollment for B2B Card programs. Prior to Citi, Paul had a career as an officer in the United States Navy.

Tim Ural leads a division of the Global Clients Team and is responsible for the commercial payments strategy to optimize business-to-business payments flows in emerging and mature markets. Tim focuses on the ability to both partner and deliver unique commercial solutions and services for market segments including mid-market, wholesale travel, fleet/fuel and payables/receivables and emerging use cases.

Tim joined Visa in 2006, serving as a program manager for the small and mid-market market segment across information management products and services. In 2009, he moved into the Visa Commercial Products team, and over the past eleven years, has worked in product development, program management and sales/consulting capacity. Prior to joining Visa, Tim held positions in product management (IBM), launching business ventures in equities trading out of New York and San Francisco (Morgan Stanley), e-commerce (B2B, C2B, B2C) and supply chain management with Oracle – Applications, and Salesforce.com.

Tim holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from Eckerd College and has a Master’s in Environmental Engineering at University of Florida, followed by graduate studies at Colombia Business School and Insead – Fair Process Leadership (France).

Tim and his family live in Marin County, California with his wife and three children.