Francis Souza

ACI Worldwide (ACI - 4, 000 employees), an U.S.A. Global Payments Co.

In this global role, I manage ACI's future vision towards the CBDC inclusion as a core product subject. I also manage the RTPS Product Inclusion, Strategic Partnership management, and RTPS Mergers / Acquisitions / Investments.

Responsibilities:

Central Bank Digital Currency
 Lead ACI product discussions on CBDCs (Retail, Wholesale, Multiple, Synthetic), Stablecoins & Corp. coins, towards determining the native-new CBDC payments rail, Central Infrastructure roadmap, CBDC framework inclusion and interoperability.

 CBDC Sales Enablement & External Thought Leadership actions like training videos, blogs, interviews and external messaging.

 Head CBDC and Stablecoin research, review technology partners and monitor Central Banks / BIS / G20 / G7 policies.

 Developed thorough partner relationships with Global CBDC Central Infrastructure (CI) partners such as R3, Consensys and G+D as a part of the CBDC activities for ACI.

Achievement: - Submitted Internal Whitepaper on wholesale/retail CBDC enablement in ACI solutions. It is a 5-year (3-phase) plan enabling CBDC and Stablecoin acceptance for P2P / Merchants / Interbank payments rails and global cross-border payments. i.e.,

 Central Infrastructure (CI) solutions,
 On-Premise Acquiring / Issuing engines
 Enterprise Payments Hub,
 Digital Overlay Services for the last-mile CBDC acceptance through payments apps.
 On-Demand Hosted Managed Services payments business
 Native-new CBDC Central Infrastructure.


Real-Time Payments System
 Business Head for the ACI-MGS Joint Venture and, enhancement of the ACI Real Time Payments Engine for India's NPCI-UPI.

 Track High Value & Low Value RTP / Instant Payments Global Sales Pipeline, monitor Total Contract Value(TCV), Revenue from Sales(RFS), Annual Recurring Revenue(ARR) and hits/skips.

 Prepare Monthly/Quarterly performance decks for Management Business Reviews.

 RFP teamwork for IP / RTPS engine, CI Hub and Payment Gateways (On-Prem/ SaaS) with Digital Overlays Solns./Services.

 Interact with cloud providers such as GC, MS-Azure and RedHat on the client's cloud / containerization strategy as well as facilitate discussions with the product architecture team on the infrastructure sizing.

 Central Banks and Banks / Schemes RFPs I have assisted to-date for Real-Time Payments Networks and Digital Overlays proposals are in the Middle East, Africa, LATAM, India, Europe and the USA i.e. the UAE Central Bank, Saudi Central Bank (SCB / SAMA), Benefit Bahrain, Egyptian Banking Corp. (EBC), Ethiopian Central Bank, SIX Payments - Switzerland, Central Bank of Brazil, BORICA Bank Services - Bulgaria, FedNow U.S.A Real-Time PILOT and WalMart Mexico Closed-Loop Real-Time Network.


Partnership Management
 Assist Corp. Development on M&A, Finance Admin. and Exec. Leadership requirements with the Partner Founders.

 Liaise between Partners and ACI on Product Management, Prof. Services, Pricing Strategy and, Contract Management.

 Strategic Business feasibility and Steering Committee reviews for Board-level reporting and implementation.

Alhamrani Universal (AU - 850 employees), a Saudi Co. belonging to the Alhamrani Group of Cos. (AGC - 5, 000 employees).

Responsibilities (Staff strength reporting to me was 16 nos. in the UAE and 122 nos. in Saudi Arabia)

 Business Strategy Planning, 360̊̊ Account Management, Agreement negotiations with partners / clients, Pricing Strategy, Procurement & Last Mile / Lifecycle Management of the Diebold ATMs, Ingenico POS & Security products.

 As a part of the Intl. Business Development responsibility, I managed RFPs / Sales of Diebold ATMs / Kiosks, Managed Services & Support for the UAE. I also added value-add partners that complemented Alhamrani's ATM and the POS payments businesses.

 As a part of the Business Support responsibility, I managed Procurement, Workshop, Staging, Material Planning, Logistic & Warehousing.

 Strategic ‘Information Memos’ for sale / investment in Turkish IT companies.

 Ensured strict compliance to the US FCPA and the UKBA in all the customer and vendor dealings.

Achievements
• Business Consulting   Single Vendor Project - All ATM Services Outsourcing and Payments Acquiring / Processing.

 Jakarta Financial Inclusion Project - W-Label Wallets, C-Loop P2P e-commerce / lending & Unattended Payments. Cards Personalization / Processing & Cards Testing S/W / Tools.

• ATM Recyclers  BOB UAE & RAK Bank Orders for Diebold Cash Recyclers network expansion

• Diebold KSA/UAE  Exclv. Distributor Agreement (KSA IDA & ISPA) & Non-Exclv. Service Partner Agreement (UAE)

• Partnerships  Base24 (Concerto), Cards Proc. (AFS), Cash Analytics (P1M1), Innova & others.

• KPI Management  Supply Chain Optimization resulted in savings of $1.5M+ & 35% increase in Saudiazation.

EPS, a payments company, implemented the Min. of Fin. order of 9000~ Outsourced ATMs for Financial inclusion & Direct Benefit Transfer.

Responsibilities
 Head the ATM RFPs for OPEX, CAPEX & Managed Services

 Advise Senior Management on the company’s growth roadmap and Technology diversification into segments like Micro-ATMs, POS, Kiosk, Payment Gateway, Brand-Agnostic OEM partnerships and the future - Cryptos Vault-as-a-Service.

 Lead Sales to sell ATM M.S., Min. Guarantee extensions, M.S. takeover, 360̊̊ client view & collections and run Profitability programs i.e. Transaction Improvement, Card + Account Base reviews & Site ROI v/s ATM lifecycle costs.

 Supervise the deployment of the MoF ATM project as per agreed deadlines to avoid delayed penalties and Implement Change Management strategies based on my Global experiences & Best Practices.

Achievements

• Canara & BOI  Canara ATM Outsourcing RFP (1200 ATMs pan-India) & achieved addn. BOI OPEX 220 ATMs.

• Essar Oil  EFT POS Business plan and feasibility for 1, 500 Oil Pump locations all over

• EPS App  ATM Geo-location App designed to attract ATM users to use EPS network.

• Collections  Dynamic KPIs enforced Staff output & achieved 90% TAT in invoice / collections.

Alhamrani Universal (AU), a Saudi Co. belonging to the Alhamrani Group of Cos. (AGC - 5K employees).

Responsibilities
 Promote Diebold’s ATMs & Software Solutions (Remote Management, CRM, Journaling & Security Office). New Self-Service projects with Natl.ID apps, ATMs + Tab integration., biometrics, NFC, smart chip-card apps etc.

 Lead major RFPs & Partner contracts for Kiosks, CIT providers, Datacenters etc.

 Assisted client tech. teams in Switch planning for D91x / Alternate NDx developments. Ensured quality support through Ops, good teamwork & effective dept. communications.

 P&L / FY budgeting, marketing strategy reviews and end-to-end Project Management of strategic projects and Product launches.

Achievements between the UAE and Saudi Arabia

• 2004-12  ENBD Natl ID, GIB Table ATMs & 2 accounts in Yemen, 11% share & 25% clients.

• 2010-12  100% Wincor buyback + 157 nos. Diebold ATMs order from RAK Bank.

• 2010  Expansion to Oman & Yemen & successfully promoted Diebold’s Recycling Technology & Bulk Cheque Deposit in the UAE.

• 2008  Achieved 44 nos. NCR buyback from Mashreq Bank & replaced with Diebold ATMs.

• 2005-10  Expansion to Bahrain (Manama), BNA/Cheque Acceptor with RAK, Mashreq, NBQ, BOB & NBD

• 2003-05  Expansion to the UAE (Dubai), Banc Du Caire (Fujitsu) & Habib Bank AGZ (NCR) acquisition.

• 2001-02  Hybrid Cards with ORGA / G&D, GCC’s 1st Bulk Cash Acceptor (SABB/HSBC, KSA) & EMV projects.

• 1999  Managed KSA’s Diebold Y2K project (1400+ units with 65 engineers) for all of Saudi Arabia's Banks.

• Conduct Demos, Network SPNS ATMs, Y2K project, BASE24 Scripting & ATM Trainings and implemented Centurion’s ATM network via VSAT for Western India, ICICI, HDFC and UTI Bank’s project for Tandem BASE24 Migration.

• Wrote a book ’LET’s GO ON-LINE’ (1997) on ATM networks / software issues.

• Headed the India-wide Ops for HSBC’s Diebold ATMs & Citibank’s Passbook printers.

• Consult on anti-virus measure and VSAT connectivity for the IBM AS/400 KapitiC, Novell (SFT-III) Total Banking Automation.

 Installation / Configuration / Support of Novell Network, P.C.s and printers