Ali Raza

Ali is a senior card and payments consultant with extensive experience in the US and international markets leading major projects at Big Four and boutique consultancies. His focus is on strategic planning and implementation across the payments value chain assisting clients improve their market position, accelerate revenue growth, manage risk, and modernise their operations and technology infrastructure. He brings a global viewpoint and perspective gained through over 100 consulting engagements and industry experience across 20 countries. Clients have included global payments companies, leading banks, international payments networks, merchants, e-commerce companies, fintech companies, and investment firms.

Major Projects

• Led the development and implementation of a credit card strategic plan for a Top 10 North American bank focused on market share and profitability growth. Provided recommendations for product rationalisation, customer segmentation, and operations, risk and technology improvements.
• Directed implementation planning efforts for a strategic new large-scale payment processing joint venture for a Top 5 US bank. Coordinated enterprise-wide internal and external teams (executive, business, operations, IT, risk, compliance) and provided project support.
• Led merchant acquiring business strategy and implementation plan for a leading North American financial institution. Conducted comprehensive market, product, and platform analysis to identify new e-commerce and digital growth and profit opportunities and managed new technology and operational build.
• Led a strategic sourcing engagement for a leading North American debit network to replace its payments switch. Conducted assessment to understand requirements, identified a set of providers, conducted RFP process and provided qualitative and quantitative recommendations to support system selection.
• Co-led a risk and regulatory assessment of the sales and customer management practices at a specialty credit card issuer to identify potential risk issues. Managed plan to improve the compliance framework including changes in business and operating practices, pricing, customer communication, and disclosures.
• Managed the development of an enterprise-wide payments strategy for an international hotel chain with a focus on driving new revenue and improving the guest experience. Provided recommendations for the introduction of new mobile / digital payment forms, rationalisation of payment processors, and improvements related to financial operations.