BID - Buy Innovate Deliver

The Buy Innovate and Deliver team's  past experience and comprehensive knowledge of the payment systems industry, including several international business development of retail networks, mass market product targeting, financial clearing systems and risk management, places us in a in a unique position for:- 

- Buying dominant stakes in acquirers and processors developed in the past by bank consortiums (whose very ownership hampers future strategic decisions in todays fast moving payment systems sector) 

- Reorganizing the targets and leading a cultural change 

 

- Creating immediate value with strong alliance with payment system partners of substance 

- Guaranteeing independence to support Shareholder Value Creation 

- Growing domestic markets 

- Launching and Developing International Opportunities 

- Developing new products in the card issuing business (virtual and physical) 

- Reorientation, New Structure and Resource Optimization 

The Team 

 

 

Rob Farbrother

Founder and Chairman PayShop 

Financial Services.
The initial operation of an International concept re paying household bills in cash and mobile telephony top-ups via a network of managed retail shop agencies.
Successful service in Portugal. Other territories explored were Brazil, Angola and Mozambique

 

Founder and Managing Director PayPoint plc 

Financial Services.
To facilitate cash payments for household bills and mobile telephony top-ups via a managed network of retail shop agencies. Technology included all Gas and Electricity pre-payment chip card acceptance.
Launch in 1997 was widely reported on all TV networks,national and regional press.
Shareholders included British Telecom,British Gas,BBC Television and a number of Water/Electricity companies

 

Managing Director Nexus plc

Whilst concurrently holding the position of CEO of LinkPlc and Managing Director of Funds Transfer Sharing Ltd (FTSL) Nexus plc emanated out of a Management Buy Out of FTSL - a company founded in 1985 as the sole licenced service provider to the Link branded ATM network. FTSL raison-d'etre was to facilitate the sharing of ATM's amongst banks and building societies which involved a switching system between banks for transaction authorisations and a daily settlement of funds. The company also managed the installation, operation and maintenance of ATM's for clients who wished to outsource such services eg American Express.
In 1991 Nexus plc was purchased by Sligos plc - a French financial services company whose major shareholder was Credit Lyonnais. Nexus developed an increasing presence in automated voice telephone banking systems and management of retail point-of-sale terminals during this time.
This led to the opportunity of researching the PayPoint concept where traditionally all utility cash payments were either accepted at "expensive" Post Office locations or Gas and Electricity Showrooms.

 

 

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Link ATM scheme 

The creation of Link followed research in the USA as competing Banks realised the economies of scale in co-operating the shared use of ATM's via all customers. The service was seen as ubiquitous and on the lines of a commodity rather than a serious competitive edge.
A number of UK financial institutions became interested and co-founder members included Western Trust and Savings Bank (a UK subsidiary of the Royal Bank of Canada),the GiroBank,Co-Opertative Bank,Abbey National Building Society and CitiBank UK (the two latter companies being previous employers of mine).
The service was to create the facilitation of switching transactions between members own ATM's for authorisation and a daily fund settlement system.

 

Operations Director and Head of European Technology Cell Citibank plc

To facilitate the ambitious growth plans of Citibank's retail presence in the UK by focussing on the use of technology rather than bricks and mortar.
As Operations Director the role entailed the development and operation of a retail branch computer system (New World),implementation of Diners Card franchise in other European countries,management of credit/charge card write-offs etc.
Citibank were also keen to create a retail ATM network in the UK which they had very successful experience in the USA.
This led to the interest in developing the Link ATM concept.

 

Systems Manager Abbey National plc

Joined Abbey National as a trainee programmer and advanced through to Senior Programmer,Systems Analyst then Systems Manager.
Responsible for the evaluation, development,operation and maintenance of a comprehensive counter top terminal system for the retail network at Abbey National - reporting to the General Manager.

 

 

 

Luís Janeiro 

BGI Mentoring Program Building Global Innovators

Apoiar os empreendedores de projetos apresentados ao ISCTE-IUL MIT - Portugal Venture Competition with support from MIT Portugal, Caixa BI, entre outros

 

Founder, Chairman & CEO PayUp Holding 

Chairman & CEO PayUp Poland

Chairman PayUp Desenvolvimento de Negócios

Chairman PayUp Romania

CEO PayUp PayUp Iberia

Chairman PayUp Belgrade

Payment Service Provider that was lunch paying household bills and pre-paid service in Poland and Romania.

First company to offer a pack of services of payment with cards (ICS) and money transfer in independent retail network.

Designed of the international green field venture. Portuguese and international funders. Successful exit in 2014.  

Active new structured partnerships with Six and First Data.

Manage more than 8.000 POS’s, including large supermarket chains.

Active cross-selling actions linking FMCG and pre-paid services.

The group as develop activities, also, in Serbia, Spain and Netherland.

 

Post Bank Project Leader CTT - Correios de Portugal  

Manage a project between CTT and Caixa Geral de Depósitos for the development of a larger domestic bank.

 

CEO CTT - Gest  

Manage an incubator for innovative business in CTT to renew the Group portfolio.

 

CEO PayShop Portugal 

CEO PayShop Moçambique 

 

PayShop create an alternative channel for bill payments and mobile pre-paid telephony achieving 25% of the market in four years, with competitors as ATM´s and home-banking.

Manage retail network with “below the line” success marketing actions.

Manage a self-sufficient programme for more flexibility in IT and Ops.

Raising funds in Portugal with VC’s.

Design international expansion of PayShop in Mozambique and Romania, with local funding. Set-up and launch the service in Mozambique

CEO of the company since begging until two years after successful exit of founders and VCs in 2004.

 

Diretor de Serviços Companhia de Seguros Império 

Controller of Mello Group (Group with to public companies) responsible for reporting consolidate accounts and projections to the Group boards, new projects, finance reengineering, reporting to Instituto de Seguros de Portugal, Banco de Portugal and Stock Exchange.

Responsible for technical provisions during five years

Manage the IT platform of the finance area.

 

 

Founder and MD  Memorando Consulting Company 

Restructuring projects of small and middle size companies, many candidates of public funds.

 

Finance Director Grupo Forma – Formação Profissional 

Apart from all the finance, planning and control, also manage clients projects and supporting sales.

 

 

Filipe dos Santos

 Independent Payments Systems Consultant

He has acted as an independent payment systems expert, advising and delivering in payments systems organisations that evolved from non-compliance and substandard practice to world class and international best standards professional practice. Reengineered and fixed broken companies replaced the top senior most managers and applied extensive programme of policies and procedures design and the correspondent staff training.

 

Regional Director Europe Compass Plus

Compass Plus is a global player specialising in information technology R&D, OLTP software development for electronic payments, consulting, implementation and support of retail banking and electronic payment systems.

Represented the company in West Europe and in Algeria.

New internet payment solutions

Wallet concepts that have been spreading all over the world and in Europe in particular, including EBA’s MyBank initiative.

  

Chairman and CEO MSCC 

Managing custom of major banking groups (Société Générale, Crédit Agricole, Banque Nationale de Paris and Barclays Bank)

 

Senior Vice President Visa International 

Senior Strategic Adviser to the President.

Vice President and Head of a number of CEMEA departments including, Joint Ventures and Strategic Alliances, Vendor Relations and Business Solutions, Member Consulting and Advisory Unit.

 

COO  ValuCard Nigeria Plc

Bank owned card company in Nigeria in which Visa International has a significant share. ValuCard became the single Visa product franchisee for Nigeria and for Nigerian banks.

 

General Manager SIBS

Executive leader since the company was created in 1983 until mid 2001.

 

 

Harry Smart

Private Investor Chairman and Non-Exec Director in a number of companies

Harry has worked at a board and senior management level in both the public and private sectors and over the last 25 years has established a track record of taking new companies from start-up through to successful shareholder exits. 

 

Career experience has ranged from developing and implementing long term strategies in large organizations to that of ‘value creation’ as a shareholder/director in management-buy-outs and company start-ups originally in financial services and electronic payments (ATM networks, EFTPOS, on-line credit/debit card payments, over-the-counter bill payments and the like) and more recently in the biotech arena.

 

Public platform speaker

Lectured at universities and management institutions and has authored a number of papers and articles.  Academic qualifications include first degrees in Chemical Technology and in Applied Computing, and an MBA.  During his working career Harry qualified by examination as a Chartered Civil Engineer and other professional memberships have included the British Computer Society, the Institute of Management, and the Market Research Society.

 

Chairman Mitomics Inc*

Mitomics Inc was originally incorporated in Canada and is currently being re-structured for re-launch in the USA preparatory to a stock exchange listing.

 

Co-founder and Executive Chairman Geneius Laboratories Ltd

 

Director Freshpallet Ltd

 

Co-Founder PayShop

 

Chairman and Managing Director Euronet Services (UK) Ltd

 

Division Managing Director Imminus Ltd/General Cable plc

 

Co-founder and Corporate Development Director Nexus Payment Systems International Ltd/Sligos (UK) Ltd

 

Head of Planning and Research Northern Rock Building Society

 

Various positions in multi-disciplinary transport/land-use planning team Tyne Wear Plan/Tyne & Wear Metropolitan County Council