Derren Powell

Derren Powell is a payments and fintech specialist with more than 25 years in financial services, spanning retail banking, card issuing, merchant acquiring, the card schemes and the fintechs built on them.

He spent over seven years at Mastercard (2018 to 2026) in senior business development roles, most recently as Vice President, Business Development, Merchants, working on the merchant and acquiring side of the network. Before that he was Vice President, Business Development, Fintech UK&I, and earlier Director, Business Development (Fintech & EMI). In these roles he acted as the bridge between new entrants to the payments ecosystem and the Mastercard network, helping challenger banks, prepaid providers and e-money institutions bring card propositions to market.

Before Mastercard, Derren was Business Manager at Transact Payments, a European e-money institution and Visa and Mastercard principal member providing BIN sponsorship across 23 countries, giving him hands-on card issuing experience from the regulated-EMI side. His earlier career was in banking: three years at Citi and more than thirteen years at HSBC, including Head of Sales for HSBC in Qatar. Across his career he has delivered more than 50 card and payment programmes, on both the issuer and acquirer side of the Visa and Mastercard schemes.

Derren has been interviewed by The Fintech Times at PAY360, appeared on the Platform Leaders panel "The future of payment platforms", and guested on payments and fintech podcasts including The Finterview and FinTech's DEI Discussions. He has been a mentor on Integrated Finance's Fintech Foundation incubator, has spoken at CC Forum London, and is a longstanding advocate for financial inclusion. He now runs Finterra, an independent payments and fintech advisory.