Aaron French

Aaron is a seasoned payments industry senior executive with 22 years’ experience in Payments, Fintech, Financial Services and Telecommunication Engineering.

During his career, Aaron has held senior executive roles spanning General Management, Product, Operations and Business Development at organisations such as the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), Westpac, First Data and Assembly Payments.

Aaron possesses strong commercial and strategic skills, is a proven leader with the ability to work at all levels of the industry to drive business concepts and innovations forward into the market. As the Head of Product at the Commonwealth Bank, Aaron led the entire development of the Albert payments terminal from first concept to completion. This was a revolutionary usage of Android tablets as secure PCI and EMV approved payment devices.

Aaron was recruited by Westpac to drive the strategy, product roadmap and product development function in Payments, which led to the significant investment into Assembly Payments, a fast growing FinTech company. Aaron then led the Product Function and Global Enterprise Sales at Assembly Payments as General Manager, delivering the first generation of payments products that are marketed by Westpac as the Presto product range. He also led the work that resulted in a joint venture between Standard Chartered Bank and Assembly Payments throughout Asia. Aaron has a passion for design thinking and developing new products that better meet customer needs and solve customer problems. Aaron holds a Bachelor of Science in Physics from the University of Wollongong.