Christian Flurscheim, Director, Digital Solutions at Visa
Christian Flurscheim is a Director in Visa’s Digital Solutions product team. This team is responsible for product management for Visa’s cloud based payment platforms, and also Visa payWave for mobile. Christian was one of the nine contributors to Visa’s HCE and Cloud Based Payments product standard. Christian has been with Visa for 3 years and prior to that worked in the Transit Smartcard industry in an engineering capacity, working on such projects as the Clipper Card program in San Francisco and Octopus Card in Hong Kong. Christian holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Technology from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Curtin University in Western Australia
Ashish Kapur, Director, Financial Services Advisory at PwC
Ashish is a Director in PwC’s Financial Services Advisory team based in San Francisco. Over the course of his 20 year career, he has led technology enabled transformational efforts at leading domestic and global banks, retailers and utilities. This experience includes designing and building content, commerce and community solutions. He is recognized for his expertise in helping clients gain agility, support digital transformation and innovation in financial services. Significant client engagements include an end-to-end review of payments strategy and architecture for a large global bank and a large multi-year effort to help an issuer manage impact of Durbin amendment while growing revenue for card portfolio through integration with a 3rd party processor.
Ashish holds a MBA in MIS from SUNY Buffalo and Bachelors in Technology from NIIT India.
Pete Donat is currently Head of First Data Ventures, a group responsible for leading First Data’s efforts to harness innovation by partnering with small innovative companies who can leverage First Data’s processing assets and unmatched distribution to drive solutions that delight our customers and materially grow long-term revenue. He is also responsible for network business development, responses to major regulatory events (e.g. Durbin I & II), managing several of the company's non-traditional partnerships. Previously, held senior management roles in Business Development, Innovation and eCommerce. He led the 2013 opening of FDC’s Palo Alto office. From 2004-09 he was VP of Enterprise Planning & Corporate Strategy at Visa - with responsibilities for long-term planning, competitive intelligence and Visa International's restructuring and IPO. From 1997-2004 he held a variety of senior management roles at MasterCard. He was VP of Product/Change Management with responsibilities for product strategy across credit, debit, prepaid, P2P programs - and regulatory risk management. He headed e-Business Development, where he implemented EMV, Mondex, internet security, PayPass, m-commerce, and prepaid solutions. Earlier, he led MasterCard’s Corporate Planning team. Prior to MasterCard he was a management consultant at Marakon Associates and a political hack on two Al Gore campaigns. He has an MBA from Wharton, a Masters in International Economics and American Foreign Policy from Johns Hopkins SAIS, and a BA from Dartmouth. He serves as Board advisor to several payment and security startups and was previously a Trustee of the World Affairs Councils in Northern California and Connecticut. He is an avid 49er season ticket holder, a slow moving backpacker, a proud father, and an aspiring wine snob.
Lauren Chessey, Senior Solutions Consultant at Vantiv
Lauren Chessey is the Senior Solutions Consultant for the PayFac line of business at Vantiv. She is responsible for ensuring new and existing PayFac partners are set-up with the most ideal payment ecosystem for their processing needs. She acts as a technical liaison between the Business Development Executive team, Channel Development team, and Product team, to ensure PayFacs partners are utilizing all value added services to help support and expand their business. Lauren was previously a Program Manager for Capital One's mobile payments processing product, Spark Pay, and managed several strategic partnerships including select Boy Scouts of America and Girl Scouts Councils. She also used to manage an open Developer API platform under VeriFone’s SAIL product, working with 60+ developers. Lauren attended the University of Cincinnati holding a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry and enjoys skiing the slopes of Tahoe in the winter.
Hitesh Anand, VP of Commerce Enablement & Mobile at Verifone
As the Vice President of Commerce Enablement and Mobile at VeriFone, Hitesh Anand is responsible for driving new products to enrich the face-to-face commerce experience. A veteran of the mobile, financial, telecommunications and semiconductor industry, Mr. Anand possesses a broad expertise-set across opportunity scoping, product/solution management, business development, project management and commercialization gained while working with customers and partners across Europe, Asia and the U.S. Mr. Anand has a unique experience with launching mobile products in developed and emerging markets. Prior to joining VeriFone in 2014, Mr. Anand served as the Global Director of Product Management for Digital and Mobile Payments at Citi Enterprise Payments group where as Chief Product Officer he drove product strategy, road-map, business development, and product development and user experience of Citi’s Mobile Wallet for mobile payments (NFC and remote payments), location-based contextual mobile offers, loyalty cards, mobile coupons and mobile ticketing to deliver game-changing innovation to market by listening to customers, learning from competitors, and cultivating an inspired and motivated team. Prior to Citi, Mr. Anand served as the Director of Mobile Financial Services at Nokia and ran the company’s Technology Strategy and Partnerships to develop and deliver mobile payments, mobile banking and other mobile financial services such as remittances, bill payments, mobile stored value accounts and mobile pre-paid to the under-banked in the emerging markets. Mr. Anand holds an MBA from Duke University, a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Arizona State University, and a bachelor of science in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Guru Nanak Dev University in India.
