The Emerging Payment Association Appoints Andrea Dunlop as Deputy Chair

The Emerging Payments Association (EPA) appoints Andrea Dunlop, CEO of Acquiring & Card Solutions at Paysafe Group, as Deputy Chair of its Advisory Board, having already completed a successful year as Advisory Board member. She will support the EPA’s Chairman Rich Wagner, and she starts her new role immediately.

Andrea’s appointment is a boost to the EPA’s mission ‘to collaborate to innovate’. The payments industry faces both challenges and opportunities. New financial services regulations (such as MLD4 and PSD2), political uncertainty, an expanding global middle class, and a worldwide shift by consumers towards digital and mobile payments methods create an important role for a powerful and unified industry voice. The EPA is confident that, alongside Rich, Andrea will help the payments association to grow into this role and to become a leading champion of innovation and success in the industry.

Andrea has more than 16 years’ experience in the financial sector, and she has an impressive knowledge of many aspects of payments: from acquiring and issuing, to mobile solutions. Andrea joined Paysafe Group Plc (formerly Optimal Payments Plc) in February 2013, and in 2014 she established Paysafe’s acquiring business in Europe. She also scaled up Paysafe’s card issuing business, which has since become a leading white-label prepaid provider in Europe. Andrea’s Paysafe portfolio includes strategic leadership and P&L management of the payment group’s merchant acquiring, payment processing and card solutions in Europe.

Tony Craddock, Director General of the EPA, said:

“I am delighted that Andrea has been appointed as Deputy Chair of the industry’s most influential trade association. She has a passion for our core objectives of developing a growing and thriving payments community. Andrea is a strong and confident voice for the industry, and she will be a great asset as we seek safe yet simplified regulation and pursue our mission to create a fairer competitive environment for our members”.

Andrea Dunlop said: “It is a huge honour to become the Deputy Chair of the EPA Advisory Board, and to work alongside Rich Wagner, Tony Craddock, the Advisory Board, and our members. The EPA is already driving a great programme of work to improve competition, access and innovation in the industry, and it is doing so at a time of significant regulatory, political, technological and behavioural change. The EPA’s board takes seriously its responsibility to push the EPA to become the leading champion of innovation and success for the emerging and established payment companies we serve, and I look forward to continuing to work towards this end.”