Payments is an industry built on infrastructure. Networks, schemes, banks, processors and technology all need to connect for the system to work. But after decades working across the industry, I’ve come to believe there is another form of infrastructure that matters just as much: relationships.
My career has taken me from Texaco and Chevron to Visa and ultimately to building Flotta, working across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the US along the way. What has stayed with me isn’t simply the experience I’ve gained in each market. It’s the relationships built within them. Many of the people I work with today are people I’ve known for years, sometimes decades. That network creates something technology can’t replicate: the ability to pick up the phone, understand who can help and bring the right people together around a problem.
That matters enormously in payments because very little happens in isolation. Entering a new market might require relationships with schemes, banks, acquirers and local partners. Building a new proposition requires understanding not only whether something can be built, but whether the ecosystem around it will support it. Solving an operational challenge often means bringing together expertise that doesn’t sit neatly within one organisation.
Experience matters. Knowing how to mobilise it matters more.
One of the lessons I’ve learned is that having the right idea is rarely enough. Someone else, somewhere, has probably had a similar one.
Execution is where the difference is made.
That means understanding the market, knowing what has worked elsewhere and recognising what needs to change locally. I’ve always believed in the principle of create once, execute many times — not because every market is the same, but because many of the underlying problems are. The skill lies in adapting the answer to the local environment rather than reinventing everything from scratch.
It’s an approach that has shaped Flotta. Our role isn’t simply to advise from the sidelines. We bring together people who have built payment programmes, worked inside major global organisations and navigated the relationships that make the payments ecosystem function. That experience can then become an extension of a client’s own team when specialist capability isn’t available internally.
The strongest networks aren’t transactional
There is another side to relationships that businesses sometimes overlook.
A network isn’t the number of people sitting in your LinkedIn connections. The relationships that prove valuable are usually the ones you’ve invested in long before you needed anything from them.
I’ve learned that from working in different cultures as much as different companies. Moving from the UK to Singapore and later San Francisco taught me to look for common ground rather than difference, to step outside familiar circles and to spend time understanding the people and markets around me. Some of those relationships have lasted for decades.
The same principle applies in business. Good relationships aren’t built when you suddenly need an introduction, a partner or an answer. They’re built through shared experience, trust and a willingness to contribute something yourself.
For an industry as interconnected as payments, that isn’t a soft skill.
It’s part of how things get done.