The Payments Leaders Show

The Career Decision Room - 5 Career Truths Most Leaders Avoid

This episode was a little different. I was not the host asking the questions I was in the hot seat. Communications strategist and stellar wordsmith Matt Pears turned the tables and put me through "The Career Decision Room": a set of powerful questions designed to uncover the 5 blind spots that quietly shape and limit our careers. What emerged was not just a conversation. It was a series of uncomfortable truths that I believe every professional especially high performers need to hear. The most impactful takeaways: 1. Your Employer Is Not Your Career Strategy One of the most common traps I see is professional people outsourcing responsibility for their career to their current employer. I did it myself early on stayed in a business for 10 years, performed well, led strong teams… but my career stalled. Here’s the reality: lifetime employment is largely gone. If you rely on your company to drive your long-term progression, eventually you’ll hit a shock restructure, redundancy, or simply being overlooked. The shift: treat your career like a series of tours of duty. Deliver value, solve problems but always be thinking, what’s next, and what’s next next? Control comes from anticipation, not reaction. 2. Think in Career Cycles, Not Job Titles One of the most powerful frameworks we discussed is thinking in four-year career cycles, inspired by Olympic gold medal winning athletes. Elite athletes don’t just train randomly they map backwards from the Olympics, to the World Championships, to what they need to do this year, this month, even this week. Your career should be no different. If you know your “next-next” move, then every decision you take today should move you closer to that. That might mean deliberately choosing roles that build missing capabilities, not just chasing the next promotion. Without that clarity, you’re just reacting to opportunities. And when you react, someone else is driving. 3. Stop Job Hunting Start Problem Hunting This is a major mindset shift. Most professionals approach the market asking: “What jobs are available?” The better question is: “What business problems exist and where can I add the most value?” Every role exists for one of three reasons: To protect and grow revenue To reduce transaction costs To mitigate risk When you understand that, you stop positioning yourself as a candidate and start positioning yourself as a solution. I shared an example of a client who made just 10 calls into his network not asking for jobs, but exploring business challenges and turned that into four offers. That’s the difference between chasing roles and creating them. 4. High Performance Alone Is Not Enough This is where it gets uncomfortable. We all want to believe that performance equals progression. But the truth is, once you reach a baseline of competence, decisions are rarely made on merit alone. They are made on trust, relationships, and advocacy. The best jobs don’t always go to the most qualified they often go to the most connected. You need people in the room speaking for you when you’re not there. That’s sponsorship. Sponsorship isn’t about being liked it’s about aligned mutual self-interest. When you help influential people solve their biggest problems, they can become invested in your success. If no one is advocating for you, in a career decision making room, you’re at a disadvantage no matter how good your performance. 5. You Don’t Get Paid What You’re Worth You Get Paid What You Negotiate This is a harsh truth, but an important one. Many professionals underestimate their value or fail to articulate it. Negotiation isn’t about pushing for more it’s about clearly demonstrating the impact you bring. It has to be win/win. That means understanding: The value you create (Increasing revenue, Reducing transaction cost, Mitigating risk) What makes you rare and valuable Who the real decision-makers are Importantly, approaching each discussion as a peer-to-peer conversation, not an interview dynamic where you give away your agency. The Mindset That Ties It All Together Aim for multiple wins. When you help the industry, the company, the leadership, and the team win you create an environment where your success becomes inevitable. In my experience when I focus on helping others achieve their ambitions, the doors tend to open. Final Thought Each element we discussed: Self-awareness Networking - Accessing the hidden job market Negotiation Infinite mindset... ...is learnable. The difference that makes the difference is whether you choose to be intentional, if you don’t design your career…someone else will. I wish you every success in owning your story and career: adrian@adrianevans.co.uk

Candice Pressinger - Director of Customer Data Security, Elavon Europe (part two)

Candice Pressinger - Director of Customer Data Security, Elavon Europe talks to Adrian Evans. Key learnings: 1. The "False Positive" commercial gap Candice reveals a staggering statistic: while global fraud costs the industry approximately $300 billion, the cost of "false positives" (legitimate transactions blocked by over-zealous security) is double that at $600 billion. Furthermore, 50% of customers rejected by security checks never return to that merchant. 2. Fraud as a macro-economic power The scale of the threat is immense. If cybercrime were a country, it would have the third-largest GDP in the world, sitting just behind the USA and China. Fraudsters are now operating as agile, data-led, high-tech enterprises rather than isolated criminals. 3. The necessity of "Consortium Data" To combat globally coordinated fraud, organisations cannot work in isolation. Candice highlights the move towards consortium data where acquirers and merchants share anonymised datasets to identify risk signals in real-time as the only way to match the fraudsters' network. 4. Build internal alliances before you need them For large-scale security integrity, collaboration must start early. Candice advises against working in silos; leaders should build alliances with sales, legal, marketing, and platform teams before crisis strikes or a project launches ensuring everyone understands their piece of the jigsaw puzzle. 5. The rise of "Agentic Commerce" Looking to the near future, Candice identifies Agentic Commerce, where AI agents perform purchasing tasks on behalf of consumers, as the next major industry evolution. She compares its potential impact to the revolutionary shift from magnetic stripe/chip to contactless payments.

Sulabh Agarwal - Managing Director, Global Head of Payments Accenture

In this episode of The Payments Leader Show, I was joined by Sulabh Agarwal, Global Head of Payments at Accenture, for an insightful conversation about the future of the payments industry and the forces shaping it between now and 2028. Sulabh shares his personal journey into payments, from credit cards and analytics at Capital One to more than two decades at Accenture, where payments has remained a constant thread. What drives his passion, he explains, is that payments sit at the very heart of society: mostly invisible when they work well, but instantly front‑page news when they fail. The conversation explores the most significant opportunities in payments today, including frictionless cross‑border payments, value‑added services, and most powerfully the untapped potential of payments data. Sulabh explains how transactional data is currently fragmented across the ecosystem and how AI and agentic technologies could unlock enormous value for customers, enterprises and economies alike. A major focus was tokenisation, covering money, deposits and real‑world assets. Through practical examples, from buying a car to purchasing event tickets, Sulabh illustrates how tokenised money and assets, combined with programmability and smart contracts, could radically reduce friction, risk and cost, while enabling new models like fractional ownership and smarter lending. Alongside opportunity comes risk. Sulabh highlights growing threats around cyber security, resilience, fraud, AI‑driven attack vectors and the implications of quantum computing. In a real‑time, agent‑driven world, legacy systems and batch processing will no longer be fit for purpose. Crucially, the discussion turned to the human dimension of change. Sulabh outlines the importance of leadership, culture and trust, introducing a clear framework built on the three C's: Clarity of vision Consistency of follow‑through Capability building. Technology alone is not enough, winning hearts and minds is essential to achieving employee trust which enables speed, resilience and sustainable performance. Looking ahead to 2028, Sulabh predicts major advances in AI‑driven payments, new payment instruments, heightened investment in security and resilience, and accelerating momentum in tokenisation. His closing message: this is an extraordinarily exciting industry, success requires focus, conviction and disciplined execution.

Dan Swift, CEO and founder of Numentum

I had one of the most meaningful human conversations I have recorded to date with Dan Swift, CEO and founder of Numentum. What started as a discussion about leadership, enterprise sales, and technology quickly became a deeply human exploration of what actually drives long‑term success in business and in life. Dan shared his journey candidly, from launching major initiatives at companies like LinkedIn and Sprinklr to building Numentum over the last nine years. But what stood out immediately was how intentionally he framed success beyond job titles and growth metrics. We talked about leadership not as authority, but as responsibility - responsibility to people. A major theme throughout our conversation was compassionate leadership. Dan spoke openly about living with anxiety and depression for much of his life, and how that self‑awareness has become his superpower as a leader. Because he understands himself so deeply, he’s able to truly see others. That translates into leadership grounded in empathy, vulnerability, and trust not at the expense of standards or performance, but in direct support of them. From there, we moved into the world of enterprise sales and buyer experience, where Dan made a powerful case for re‑humanising selling. In a world overloaded with automation, sequences, and now AI‑driven outreach, buyers are more overwhelmed than ever. Walls are up, trust is low, and noise is everywhere. Dan challenged the idea that more activity equals better outcomes. Instead, he talked about **relationship‑first selling, understanding who knows whom, earning warm introductions, and adding value long before asking for anything in return. One of the most striking insights he shared was the data behind this approach: warm paths into organisations convert to meetings over 70% of the time, compared to less than 1% for cold outreach using the same data and messaging. This led us into relationship capital, LinkedIn, and how leaders and sellers show up in public. Dan believes LinkedIn is one of the most powerful one‑to‑many relationship tools we have only if it’s used with generosity. His filter is simple: "If what you’re posting doesn’t add value to the person reading it, why post it at all?" We also spoke honestly about the tension many sellers feel, knowing the right way to sell but being measured on the wrong data points. Dan was clear: compensation and metrics drive behaviour, and many organisations are still optimising for activity rather than outcomes, trust, and long‑term impact. The conversation ended on a deeply reflective note. I asked Dan what he’d say to his 21‑year‑old self, and his answer was simple and powerful: *it’s going to be okay. Success comes from learning, caring, evolving, and being kind, especially to yourself. Dan shared how he’s only recently learned to slow down, take care of his health, and actually celebrate success rather than immediately moving on to the next challenge.

Willem Wellinghoff - UK Chair Ecommpay

In this episode I am joined by Willem Wellinghoff in a thoughtful and grounded conversation on leadership, curiosity, trust, and the future of payments. Willem shares his unconventional “squiggly” career journey from law into fintech and payments, emphasising that meaningful careers are rarely linear. A recurring theme throughout the discussion is curiosity which Willem describes as essential not just for leadership, but for staying human in a rapidly evolving industry. For him curiosity must be paired with grit, discipline, and action, as progress rarely happens without setbacks. The conversation explores what it really means to be customer‑centric, arguing that it goes far beyond slogans. True customer focus starts with deeply understanding how different people want—and are able—to pay, particularly across regions and abilities. Willem highlights financial inclusion and accessibility as strategic imperatives, not altruistic extras, pointing to the often‑overlooked economic power of underserved communities. Looking to the future of payments, Willem discusses why payments only feel instant, even though settlement often isn’t. This illusion is built on trust, trust between consumers, merchants, banks, and payment networks. He identifies Stablecoin, open banking, and account‑to‑account payments as major opportunities to reduce friction, improve transparency, and enable real‑time global payments, while still protecting consumers. Finally, reflecting on his younger self, Willem stresses the importance of hard work, kindness, and purpose. Leadership, he concludes, is about building trust, challenging the status quo, and bringing people together around something meaningful especially at a pivotal moment in the evolution of the payments industry.