The Summit Speaker Spotlight: Firoz Patel, Global Executive Vice President, Payza
Welcome to our Summit speaker spotlight series! Each week, learn more about one of our amazing speakers, then make sure you attend their session at The Summit, Canada’s premiere payments conference, May 24-26 in Toronto, ON.
We’re proud to welcome Firoz Patel to The Summit, where he’ll be talking innovation—and the building blocks of a global payments ecosystem driven by innovative payment platforms.
About Firoz
In 2004, Firoz Patel founded AlertPay Inc. – a globally recognized solution for online payments. As CEO of AlertPay, Mr. Patel oversaw all aspects of AlertPay’s day-to-day operations, attracting over 8 million members from all corners of the globe. In 2012, Mr. Patel successfully brokered the acquisition of AlertPay's strategic assets by UK-based MH Pillars. Mr. Patel was recruited during the transition to ensure the smooth transition from AlertPay to the Payza platform. Today, as Payza's Global Executive Vice President, Mr. Patel is responsible for the company’s strategic partnerships, forging the behind-the-scenes relationships that allow Payza to operate seamlessly in more than 190 countries around the world.
What motivates you to do what you do?
A major motivation for me is having opportunities to overcome challenges. In the payments world, there’s always a new challenge to overcome, and that’s what keeps pushing me day in and day out.
What do you spend most of your time doing?
Recently my focus has been on scouting out and solidifying new partnerships which will help improve the Payza platform. Each new partnership we forge translates to new and improved services for our members, so this is a big priority for me.
What is the best advice you received?
This may seem like a cliché, but I received this advice when I was just starting out and the truth of it has always stuck with me: Take care of your clients and your clients will take care of you.
What is the biggest risk you’ve taken?
We’ve made it our mission to be a truly global online payment platform, and that means entering markets that are completely nascent or transforming rapidly, such as India and Bangladesh. In these regions, services and infrastructure may still be in their infancy, so there are many uncertainties when launching our services there, but we must remain true to our vision and mission.
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would that be?
I’ve had the opportunity to travel to almost every corner of the world and experience different ways of life in dozens of cities and countries. With that in mind, there is still nowhere else I would prefer to live than in Canada and in Montreal. Canadian values, Quebecois “Joie de Vivre”, and Montreal’s mix of communities and cultures makes it, in my mind, an ideal place to live and raise a family. I feel very lucky to call Montreal home.
With rapid-fire keynotes, in-depth breakout sessions, networking opportunities, an exhibit hall, demos, social events and the FinTech Cup, The Summit is the place to be for all things payments! Register today at payments.ca/summit.
