Masha Cilliers

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Advisor, Director, NED

Independent

Member since

07 Jan 2009

Location

London

Bio

Over 30 years experience in payments business across traditional and emerging channels. Held C-level roles prior to becoming a consultant. Currently NED at Trust Payments and Board Advisor at Xanderpay; a member of a range of payment associations as well as a recognised speaker and writer on the subject of payments, marketplaces and payfacts, fraud management and identity validation. Previously held senior posts at Visa, Microsoft, Mastercard, Cybersource and Worldline, managed own consulting company Payment Options Ltd, NED at PaySME and Board advisor at Limonetik(now Thunes).

Experience

Board Advisor

Xanderpay

Jun 2023 - Present

Supporting the board and the company in its expansion and growth. Bringing in payment and marketplace orchestration expertise to the travel sector. Helping with fund raising efforts by introducing to network and finetuning the proposition.

NED

Trust Payments

May 2020 - Present

Board member at Trust Payments (previously known as Secure Trading). Active board participation, CEO support and advice, industry insights to the board, sharing neetwork and making relevant introductions, ensuring compliance and clear strategic direction of the company.

Principal Consultant

Payment Options Ltd

May 2013 - Feb 2025

Payments and ecosystem expertise to Merchants, Schemes, PSPs, Banks, startups, fintechs and Investors, focusing on online channel and covering payments, fraud management, compliance and regulation and related services. Payment ecosystem education, developing and launching producs and services, strategy, acquiring, partnerships and alliances with broad range of ecommerce ecosystem players and multichannel deployment strategy

Consultant and Board Advisor to Thunes Collection

Thunes

Feb 2014 - Dec 2022

Helping the French company with its international growth strategy, building channels and partneships as well as advising management on digital payment, compliance and other related issues. Actively involved in creating the proposition, complex products, ensuring forward looking compliance and establishing the brand. Assisting in fund raising activities. After Thunes acquisition helping build global acceptance network, interim head of network built extensive reach to APMs in APAC, MEA and EU.

Specialist Partner

Be Shaping the Future Management Consulting Ltd

Jul 2017 - Dec 2021

Subject Matter Expert Partner for the Payments Practice. Specialising in payment strategy and practical solution implementation for the following sectors and subjects: Merchant Acquiring, Payment Processing, New Verticals (maketplaces, gig- and shared- economies), Fraud and Identity Management, Payment Facilitation, Open Banking, Real Time Payments, Request to Pay as well as Compliance with relevant payment Regulations. Initiated and delivered proejcts for top tier acquirers, PSPs, retailers, corporates, online OTAs, financial services companies, global travel loaylty company amongst others.

Board Member, Heading Strategy and Innovation, Par

Datacash (Acquired By Mastercard)

Jan 2012 - Jun 2012

Reporting to CEO, member of Executive Board of Directors. Led innovative thinking and identified strategic business opportunities such as new products, services, partners and markets to increase revenue growth. Helped MasterCard leverage their investment for the benefits of its stakeholders and managed three key teams: Innovation, Partnerships and Marketing.

Vice President, Global Partnerships & Alliances

Global Collect, acquired by Worldline

Oct 2009 - Jan 2012

Reporting to CCO, part of senior management team. Set up and managed Alliances team, managed re-design of internal processes and supporting infrastructure and outsourced partner integration as a speedy go to market. Built strategic partnerships across ecommerce and other platform providers

Nov 2008 to Oct 2009 Head of European Business Dev

Cybersource (Acquired by Visa)

Nov 2008 - Oct 2009

Reporting to the EMEA MD, part of senior management team. Led development of the key EMEA markets (starting with France and Germany) and expanding the payment reach to enable a truly international payment facility for the clients of CyberSource. Formed close partnerships with key companies in the payments space (Atos, Deutsche Bank, Elavon etc) and helped future planning for vertical and mobile strategies.

Oct 2003 to Oct 2009 Senior Commerce Development M

Microsoft

Oct 2003 - Oct 2009

Established and increased acceptance of multiple online payment methods in Europe for the Microsoft MSN Member Platform Group – the platform which ran online sales of Microsoft.

BizDev Manager, then Digital Commerce Manager

Visa CEMEA

Jan 1994 - Sep 2003

Working as country analyst for Eastern Europe, progressing to Country Manager for Russia, then Digital commerce manager for new technologies (chip card, online payments)

Show all experience

Latest opinions

Payment industry is heating up but is it helping merchants?

Pretty much every day we are reading about a new payment method, another start up and another way to pay online or over the mobile phone. But if you are a retailer/merchant, how does that help you choose what is the right option for you? I would argue that it's becoming increasingly different to filter out what is the marketing noise, what is in...

11 June 2012

Latest comments

FinTechs must spend investor funds wisely and choose the right strategic approach for growth

@Conchur, an interesting insight, thank you for sharing. The point about evolving strategy-making and the ability of startup CEO's to take on this key task in addition to multitude of other day to day tasks is, to my mind, a very significant one. Indeed, in my experience, running a start up can consume so much of the time and effort that it does not often afford an opportunity to 'strategise' and to look outside of your organisation and into the future.

24 Mar 2021 12:24 Read comment

Challenges in KYC and AML in 2017

Indeed some very good points. I would like to take the argument furhter - if financial institutions are doing it, shouldnt retailers look at leveraging the KYC technology to know their customers better? Isn't managig fraud all about knowing your cusotmer, when it comes down to it?...

Here are my thoughts the other day: http://news.retailrisk.com/news/kyc-authentification-fraud-management-tools-online-retailers/

21 Mar 2017 11:28 Read comment

Big Data and Payments Drive Loyalty in Business Banking.

Colin, this indeed sounds like a great idea and that which compliment the SME banking services. And in my experience the banks miss this segment when it comes to innovation while trying to go after the 'big fish' who indeed doesnt need bank's innovation, as it has a capacity to innovate by itself. But what would it take for the banks to invest in this platform if there are no enterprise customers behind it?

12 Sep 2013 15:47 Read comment

See all 8 comments by Masha