My CREDENTIALS & Accreditations
Chartered Fellow (CMgr FCMI) is a distinguished status reserved for leaders who have passed their Chartered Manager assessment and have over a decade of management experience, including at least three years at a strategic level.
The University of Exeter Business School’s flagship MBA programme is one of only 13 UK programmes to be awarded Tier One status in CEO Magazine’s latest Global MBA rankings.
THE PERSON BEHIND THE PERSPECTIVE
A View From Every Seat
I’ve sat on every side of the payments table: issuer, acquirer, PSP, scheme and merchant, over 26 years in an industry that rarely stays still long enough to be understood from just one seat.
That vantage point is where Tango Payment Strategy & Solutions comes from. Across roles at Barclaycard, CyberSource, Visa and Home Retail Group (Argos, Homebase, and post-acquisition Sainsbury’s), I kept noticing the same pattern: transformation programmes rarely fail inside a system, they fail in the seams between systems, the handoffs nobody owns and nobody puts on an org chart. That observation became my Seam Thesis, and it’s the foundation of P.A.C.E., the framework I now use to help organisations navigate change with the same rigour I built managing multi-million dollar business cases at Visa.
I hold an MBA from the University of Exeter, a tier 1 global institution and I’m a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute, credentials that sit alongside a career built delivering, not just advising: most recently overseeing the cross functional refactor of over 100 applications whilst leading Visa’s first cloud acceptance launch in Saudi Arabia, a nine figure, ten-year NPV case built, defended and launched.
My advisory practice exists because organisations facing change, whether that’s a carve-out, a replatform, or a market entry, need someone who has stood in every seam and already knows where they tend to fail.
MY FULL STORY
Joining The Seams
Anyone who's played Sunday League knows the goal that costs you the game rarely comes from being outmuscled by the lump up front. It comes from the gap between you and the full back, the seam neither of you owned. Twenty-six years in payments taught me the same lesson about organisations. I've spent this career on every side of the industry, and the pattern repeats everywhere: the individual systems mostly work. It's the handoffs between them that quietly decide whether a transformation succeeds.
I landed into the Payment industry by accident whilst waiting for my exam results. A summer job at Barclaycard Merchant Services investigating missing 'Zip-Zap' card vouchers turned into a permanent role, a promotion or two and the realisation that my habit of always asking 'but why?' had basically been a 20 year path to becoming a Business Analyst. I moved around Barclaycard for a few years before landing in Barclaycard International as a Senior Business Analyst, working business analysis and change delivery across issuing and acquiring in a PRINCE2-controlled environment. That's where I learned the discipline: regulated payments don't forgive vague requirements.
From there I moved to the merchant side, spending nearly a few years on weaving payments through a band new Order Management & Fulfilment system that was being deployed. I was then asked to become Head of Group Payments Technology, accountable for the enterprise architecture of the Payment Domain across Argos, Homebase, and the other elements of the Home Retail Group. I led the strategic review that took Customer Payments, Authorisations and Settlement apart and rebuilt it around a new Enterprise Payment Gateway, and chaired the domain and solution design authorities that had to live with the consequences.
Next came the PSP and acquirer side at CyberSource, as Director of Unified Commerce and Global Solutions. I led the design of unified online and in-person payment and fraud solutions, and pioneered the expansion of open-loop contactless processing into mass transit, work that meant building the financial models and commercial cases, then taking them through pricing, packaging and sales training to make them real.
Since 2021 I've been Senior Director, Strategic Solutions at Visa Acceptance Solutions, working globally across Europe, CEMEA, APAC and North America, the scheme side of the table. I built the metric-led business case behind Visa's KSA localisation programme (a $16M build supporting roughly $99M in forecast FY27 to FY30 revenue, a $50M ten-year cumulative NPV) and took it from mandate to production: 127 applications refactored for cloud and deployed to sovereign infrastructure, Visa's first-ever cloud acceptance introduction. I authored the strategy and delivery roadmaps behind the Europe Cloud Platform Localisation programme, carrying an $85M five-year revenue model and a $58M pipeline behind it, and coordinated the China domestic processing opportunity across product, infrastructure, legal and finance.
Four seats at the table taught me where the seams sit and how they fail. I founded Tango Payment Strategy & Solutions to put that pattern to work for organisations facing their own moment of change, a carve-out, a replatform, a regulated market entry, a modernisation programme. The Seam Thesis is the diagnosis. P.A.C.E. is how I turn it into a plan a business can actually execute against.
If any of this sounds like the problem you're facing, get in touch.
My Areas of expertise
Where the Seams Show Up
Carve-Out & Separation
When a business splits, whether that's a divestment, a joint venture unwind, or separating from a parent group, payments is rarely the first thing anyone thinks about and usually the thing that breaks. I map the seams that get missed when systems, contracts and ownership are pulled apart under a deadline, so the split doesn't cost you at the till.
Replatform & Migration
I've rebuilt an Enterprise Payment Gateway from the ground up and taken a cloud localisation programme from mandate to live transactions. Replatforming fails in the same place every time, the handoff between old and new, not the technology on either side. I plan for that handoff first, not last.
Regulated Market Entry
I built and defended the business case behind Visa's Saudi Arabia localisation programme and led the strategy behind its China domestic processing opportunity. Entering a regulated payments market means satisfying a regulator and a P&L at the same time, and I've done both.
Cost-Out & Margin Recovery
Payment estates leak money in the same handful of places on almost every project I've worked: declined transactions nobody fought, routing logic nobody's revisited, fees nobody's renegotiated in years. I find where the leakage actually is before recommending where to cut.
Modernisation & AI-Readiness
I led the refactoring of 127 applications onto sovereign cloud infrastructure for Visa's first cloud acceptance launch. Modernisation programmes stall when the architecture gets ahead of the organisation's readiness to run it, so I plan both tracks together, not one after the other.
Vendor & Partner Selection
I chaired the strategic review that replaced Home Retail Group's payment estate with a new Enterprise Payment Gateway, and sat on the design authorities that lived with the consequences afterwards. Choosing a payments partner is a ten-year decision dressed up as a procurement exercise, and I help you see it that way before you sign.
My point of view
Good strategy is a choice about what to make possible.
The Right Solution, Not Just More Technology
In an industry often obsessed with the next "revolutionary" API or "game-changing" gateway, it is easy to lose sight of the only thing that actually matters: the result.
At Tango Payment Strategy & Solutions, my perspective is simple: technology is a tool, never the destination. I have seen too many multi-million pound transformations stall because they were built on "technology for technology’s sake" rather than a grounded understanding of the commercial and regulatory reality.
I don’t believe in pushing software or padding roadmaps with unnecessary features. I believe in finding the right solution to a specific problem. Sometimes that means a complete architectural refactor of 127 applications; other times, it means a more disciplined approach to vendor negotiation and fee optimisation. My independence is my greatest asset to you — I am not incentivised by the sale of a product, but by the successful execution of your strategy.
People Make the Difference
Software doesn't navigate a complex regulatory mandate in the Middle East, or unblock a $100M business case in a struggle between finance, commercial and engineering — people do.
I have spent more than 20 years sitting in "every seat at the table." I have been the Issuer, the Acquirer, the Merchant, the Network, and the Tech Builder. This 360-degree perspective allows me to see the friction points that others miss. But domain mastery is only half the battle.
The real talent is the ability to bring people together. My work is about bridging the gap between what the technical teams want to build and what the Finance Director needs to approve. It is about aligning cross-functional teams toward a shared outcome, ensuring that every stakeholder feels the relief of a de-risked, predictable delivery.
The Right People Make the Biggest Difference
When you need guidance, you're not buying a corporate banner only to be handed over to a junior associate. You are hiring a Principal Advisor who has lived your challenges first-hand at organisations like Visa, CyberSource, and Sainsbury’s Argos.
Someone to bring the outside-in perspective, structured challenge, and practical momentum leaders need when the decision cannot wait. Our work moves from a clear view of the business today to a plan people can believe in tomorrow.
I have lived and breathed the payments industry through the move from in store to e-commerce, from ecommerce to on m-commerce and now as we move into the next nexus of payment experience, agentic commerce, I'm here to help you navigate towards the North Star your organisation deserves.
Tango payment strategy & solutions limited
17378388
REGISTERED COMPANY ADDRESS
86 Johns Road
Northampton
NN7 3PZ