Ria is a Senior Specialist in the Digital & Cyber & Intelligence Solutions Department at Mastercard. She is currently dealing with PSD2 topics and authentication solutions alongside being the co-lead of Mastercard’s Women Leadership Network for Germany.
 
Before discovering & joining the world of payments, Ria was working at Accenture in the Financial Service sector. Over the course of her career, she has had many gigs in the banking industry with experiences ranging from Retail Banking to Corporate & Investment Banking. 

After receiving her bachelor’s degree in International Business Management from the University of East Anglia, Ria went on to pursue her postgraduate studies at the University of St Andrews obtaining a Master of Letters in International Business.

Mara brings experience from online money transfer service provider TransferWise Operations team. At the moment, her focus areas are European and Asian markets. One of the recent projects where Mara took place was the introduction of Polish local details.

Prior to joining TransferWise, Mara worked at Deloitte where she was responsible for internal risk procedures as well as took place in consulting projects.

At the moment Mara is based in Tallinn, Estonia.

Ruzanna Nahapetyan, the CEO of SimplySolutions, has extensive experience in tech entrepreneurship, management, and marketing. She is driving the company’s expansion, leveraging its diverse portfolio that spans various industries.

Beyond her role at Simply Pay, Ruzanna actively contributes to a group of experts, offering strategic insights to startups and established companies alike. Before joining Simply Pay, she held managerial and executive positions in retail, logistics, and international organizations, honing her skills in legal affairs, operations, and commercial strategy.

Simply Pay isn’t just an IT company—it’s a hub for cutting-edge hardware and software technologies, including cash handling solutions, self-service kiosks, and fleet management systems.

Natalia Ivanis has 15+ years of experience in merchant payments and event organizing services. Her previous positions include Deputy Head of Cards & POS at SLSP, a.s., one of the biggest banks in Slovakia which is a part of Erste Bank Group. Natalia is currently a Head of Marketing and Media Partnership at Empiria Group, that specializes in the production of upper-scale B2B events, International Awards, webinars and business intelligence for merchant payment professionals.

She is a part of the managing team behind Merchant Payments Ecosystem (MPE) – the biggest European conference on merchant payments. Natalia is also involved in strategic planning, large-scale, industry-specific research and content creation projects supporting key conference topics.

Natalia’s hobbies include running, hiking and business literature.

Ekaterina Safonova is an Associate Professor with 20 years of experience in technical sciences research and lecturing, 10+ years of experience in cyber security, combining deep technical expertise with vital business and leadership skills.

She joined Cybertonica to lead the Cybersecurity segment as a Board Technical Advisor as well as Director for Partnerships and Training.

She founded her own company – CS Consulting and Advisory, supporting companies on questions of cybersecurity and payment fraud, new products, authentication methods and biometrics.
In 2018 Ekaterina joined Imperial College Business School FinTech Center as a Technical Advisor at cyber security, Financial fraud and its prevention, new authentication methods and future of biometrics.

Ekaterina Safonova has developed and launched a specialized Cybersecurity course for the payments industry – Fraud and Fraud Prevention that was certified by CPD Certification Service at Emerging Payments Association, where she works as invited professor.

She has also organised highly successful Cybersecurity and GDPR evenings at Level39 that professionals described as “the best GDPR event for the last year”. Ekaterina Safonova led the fireside chat at Mobile 360 in Hague in 2018 discussing GDPR and cyber security issues; she moderates and chairs technical panels and events internationally.

In 2019 she wrote a chapter for The PAYTECH Book “The financial arms race – the “game” with no rules” and a chapter for The LegalTech book “Smart home or spy home: cyber threats and security solutions” published by Wiley. She is creating the online course “Future of the Fraud and Authentication”, “IoT – smart world of new challenges, cyber threats and security solutions”, and preparing her own courses on Fintech for MBA executives.

Meanwhile, Ekaterina has successfully finished the course on “Business strategy and Fintech” at Said Business School Oxford University and won Fintech/Payments leader of the year award at EWPN in Amsterdam.

Her strong technical background includes a PhD and 37 publications, including 7 books. Ekaterina has adjunct teaching experience in the UK, where she resides, and has spoken at global conferences. She is passionate about her topic and international in her approach, loves learning new things, solving brain-boiling tasks and opening unexplored horizons.

Cathie-Rosalie is recognised for her expertise in all aspects of the Fintech sector, whether relating to banking or financial regulation, data protection or cybersecurity.

Cathie-Rosalie is a partner in our Banking & Finance and Tech & Comms sectors, based in Paris. She also leads the French and Luxembourg Fintech practice. She is also Head of our Luxembourg office.

Cathie-Rosalie is registered with the Paris, Brussels (list E) and Luxembourg (List IV) bars.

Cathie-Rosalie provides both legal advice and acts in regulatory litigation.

She has developed solid experience in regulatory and prudential matters (licensing or exemption procedures, freedom to provide services or freedom of establishment regime, declaration of agents, distributors or intermediaries, drafting of complex contractual agreements including outsourcing, implementation of internal procedures, compliance, anti-money laundering and combating terrorist financing, internal control, management of conflict of interest intra group, banking secret, etc.). She also advises her clients concerning the payment systems (EDI, Swift net, Target II, Euro 1) and the requirements of professional rules, especially PCI-DSS, PA-DSS.

With a leading position in supporting projects linked to new technologies, Cathie-Rosalie draws from more than 15 years’ experience in FinTech. She represents both new disruptive players operating in Fintech, RegTech and Insurtech sector and banks, financial institutions or insurers in the development of innovative services (e-payment, electronic money, prepaid cards, mobile, banking, blockchain, crowdfunding, crowdlending, crowdequity, payment initiation services, account information services, investment platforms, robot advisory, online KYC, etc.). She also assists her clients in the implementation of their dematerialisation projects of contracts, electronic/biometric signature, strong authentication, cybersecurity, data protection, outsourcing, cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

Cathie-Rosalie supports her clients as they develop their presence in both Europe and Africa (Maghreb, Central African Economic and Monetary Community zone, West African Economic and Monetary Union zone).

Cathie-Rosalie holds a PhD from the University of Montpellier, where she was a senior lecturer in cybersecurity for several years. She has published numerous articles and She is regularly invited as an expert contributor to conferences and TV/radio shows.

Cathie-Rosalie has also published several books, notably in 2005 in the editions Hermes Lavoisier, “Le paiement en ligne: sécurisation juridique et technique (Online payment: legal and technical security) “.

Claudia Chiper is a Partner with Wolf Theiss and the coordinator of the banking and finance practice of the Bucharest office. With almost fifteen years of experience in the legal field, Claudia specializes in banking and finance. Claudia has extensive experience in advising international and domestic credit institutions, financial companies, and corporations in relation to regulatory aspects of Romanian law, financial services and payment services.

Inna is an experienced product manager at SIA S.p.A – a European technology provider for payments, cards, network and capital markets. She is working on acquiring front-end services in the ATM, POS and Ecommerce areas.

Based in Budapest, Inna spends a lot of time travelling around Europe due to her work, being Milan, Vienna and Bratislava her most frequent destinations, making good use of her six languages knowledge. With her international mindset, she is encouraging and building essential collaborations across different teams within SIA Group thus delivering customer-oriented solutions. During her professional experience Inna was involved in projects both in start-ups and mature organisations.

She found her passion in cards and believes that by building a diverse payments ecosystem all its participants shall find the best way to pay.

Alison is a payments policy expert with in-depth knowledge and understanding of the payments and regulatory landscape in Europe, particularly Ireland and the UK. As a director of fscom, the boutique compliance consultancy, she helps payments businesses understand their regulatory obligations and develop commercially-sound systems and controls that protects consumers and adds value to the business.

She is proud to become the EWPN’s ambassador for Ireland having already taken up the baton to foster diversity in her own business as well as through her role as a director of the Association of Professional Compliance Consultants (APCC) and with the Emerging Payment Association’s (EPA’s) Women in Paytech project.

In addition to these roles, Alison chairs the APCC’s Supervision Working Group, which enables the dialogue between the FCA’s Supervision Department and compliance consultants, and leads the EPA’s Project Regulator, which seeks to influence the payments regulatory agenda.

Prior to joining fscom, Alison was the e-money policy specialist at the FSA and then FCA and was the Consumer Council’s financial needs expert, leading on the successful Competition Commission inquiry on current accounts in Northern Ireland.