José-Luis Langa has a degree in Economics at the Complutense University in 1989 and completed the PhD studies on Economic Finance at Autónoma University. In between, he qualified in a public competition to get a position at the Central Bank of Spain in 1990. Since 1992, he has been participating in several national and international committees dealing with Payment Systems at the European Central Bank (ECB), SWIFT, BIS or G-20.

In 2000 José Luis was appointed as Managing Director of the Interbank Payment Service. In 2005, when the later company was transformed to create Iberpay, he acted as its interim Managing Director. His current position in Iberpay is Deputy Managing Director where he is responsible for international, institutional and cash management.

He is member of the Advisory Group on Market Infrastructures on Payments (AMI-Pay) and the Euro Cyber Resilience Board for Pan-European Financial Infrastructures (ECRB), both at ECB. He participates in several groups of the European Payments Council (EPC). He is also Chairman of the European Automated Clearing House Association (EACHA) and member of the Payments Interoperability and Extension (PIE) taskforce of the CPMI (BIS). He represents Iberpay at the Latam Payment Processors Association. Finaly, he is member of the Cash Committee at the Spanish Central Bank and alternate participant at the Spanish Payment Committee.

Faisal Alhijawi is the Chief of Strategy and Development Officer of Buna since October 2020. His responsibilities at Buna include leading the strategy & planning, business and products development, communications, and marketing.

Prior to joining Buna, Faisal held several roles at Western Union Financial Services in Dubai, UAE, including the Director of Account Payout Network, and earlier to that he was the Director of Global Payments.

During his 8 years tenure at Western Union, he led several initiatives to build end-to-end cross-border payment services by creating strategic partnerships with diverse classes of organizations including banking, fintech, and government institutions.

Prior to that, Faisal held various techno-business positions for 12 years in the private sector focusing on online and mobile payment solutions.

Katja is Managing Director of the EMEA Payments and Commerce Solutions Team of JPMorgan Chase. In her current role she is responsible for JPMorgan's Payment Product offerings across the regional footprint and for industry outreach and advocacy. Lehr was previously Global Head of Bank and Alternative Product Solutions at PayPal in San Jose, CA, USA, responsible for PayPal's strategic developments of all non-card based products.

Before transitioning to the US, she worked for PayPal in Berlin, responsible for the build out of PayPal's EMEA payment business. Prior to PayPal, Katja was Vice President of Member Representation at the International Financial Services Association (IFSA), today part of the American Bankers Association in Parsippany, NJ, USA.

Before joining IFSA, Lehr worked at SWIFT in La Hulpe, Belgium, where she was responsible for the development of SWIFT's Trade Services Utility and Trade Services standards. Prior to SWIFT, Katja spent 15 years at Dresdner Bank where she held various positions in Trade and Payments Operation, Product Management and Strategic development. Lehr holds a diploma as Professional of Banking and a diploma in Financial Economy (LIFBA).

Carmen Arias is advisor at the BIS Innovation Hub in the Singapore Centre and currently leads the business and commercial workstream for Project Nexus. This initiative is transforming cross-border payments by connecting domestic fast payment systems at scale, to enable fast, efficient and affordable retail cross-border payments globally. BIS Innovation Hub is working with central banks and payment system operators to implement Nexus in India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, with a product expansion plan that envision the integration of new countries and use cases.

With extensive expertise in global cash management and fintech, Carmen has driven numerous payments initiatives. Main important as Product Owner for Santander’s Global Payments & Collections Hub, she helped shape solutions for both commercial and wholesale banking, and at PagoNxt, a Santander subsidiary, where she played a Payments Manager role, developing international payment services focused on B2B and B2B2C target market.

Her comprehensive knowledge covers payment infrastructures, correspondent banking services, remittances, and online banking. Carmen is also known for her leadership in cross-functional and international teams, contributing to the evolution of global financial services with a forward-thinking and collaborative approach.

Mike is currently responsible for Swift's Industry Engagement across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He but started his career at Swift in February 2023 focused on enabling cross-border interoperability for domestic instant payment market infrastructures to make them reachable for 24/7 cross-border, instant, frictionless payments. Prior to joining Swift, he spent more than 25 years delivering banking technology solutions across Europe and Asia. 

The opportunity to deliver a regional SEPA payments platform in Europe sparked his passion for payments, followed by the opportunity to work on several cutting-edge payment innovation projects in Asia. Working on the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Project Ubin to explore the use of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) for payments and securities clearing and settlement sparked a deeper passion for the future of payments, ultimately leading him to join Swift where he can make the future of payments a reality.

Sairoze has worked in payments policy within UK Finance since its inception as a leading trade association and voice for the banking and finance industry. With a career as analyst and strategist in a range of sectors characterised by innovation and disruption including mobile telecoms, broadcast and music industries, Sairoze brings her experience to the payments sector as it also undergoes transformative change. Through this, she engages with regulators and industry in identifying, articulating and addressing strategic and policy issues facing the payments sector.