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Stephen Karpin
Regional President, Asia Pacific
Visa
Stephen Karpin is Visa's President for Asia Pacific. Based in Singapore, he is responsible for all Visa’s business operations in the region. Prior to leading Asia Pacific, Stephen was the Representative Director of Visa Worldwide (Japan) and Country Manager, Japan. He has also served as Group Country Manager for Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific and Group Country Manager for Regional Southeast Asia and Asia Pacific Sales Operations Lead.
Stephen’s experience extends from having held leadership roles across Australia’s largest financial institutions including Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Westpac Banking Corporation and after several years at Citibank, where he worked in Australia, Singapore and Japan.
Before he joined Visa in 2014, Stephen was the Managing Director of CommSec, Australia’s largest online trading platform. Prior to that, he was Executive General Manager, Credit Cards at Commonwealth Bank.
At Westpac, Stephen served as Head of Unsecured Finance and held responsibilities for the leadership of Westpac’s credit card and personal loans businesses.
Speaking at SFF 2026
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12:25–1:10pmFri 20 NovFestival StageHall 1, Singapore EXPOPremium
Technology Rewiring
The New Economics Across the Payments Value Chain
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Anuj KhoslaChief Executive Officer - Digital BusinessHitachi Payment Services
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Shinichiro NishikawaHead of Global Payments Strategy & Transformation SectionNTT DATA Japan
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Stephen KarpinRegional President, Asia PacificVisa
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Yukinobu SaekiManaging Executive Officer & Chief Executive for APACMUFG Bank, Ltd.
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Irina ChuchkinaAdvisorGlobal Finance & Technology Network (GFTN)Moderator
About this session
For years, payments competed on the rails—faster, cheaper, more reliable ways to move money from A to B. But as transactions become instant, ubiquitous, and nearly free, the rails themselves are commoditizing. The value is migrating elsewhere: to data, embedded experiences, working capital, fraud intelligence, and the software wrapped around every transaction. Moving money is table stakes; the real margin lives above it. Learn where payments value is genuinely being created as core processing commoditizes, how leading players monetize data, software, and embedded finance beyond the transaction, and what it takes to climb the value stack.
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