Upendra Mardikar

A prolific inventor and cyber security & digital identity executive with an “art of possible” mindset who led global teams to secure world class organizations including American Express, Visa, PayPal and is credited with 95+ patents issued and pending.

Upendra is the Chief Security Officer of Snap Finance, a leading omnichannel digital first fintech and POS lender, where he leads cyber security while building new platforms to enable growth opportunities. This includes securing innovative multi-cloud platforms and products, Artificial Intelligence, client-facing technology, and customer and developer experiences.

He is a regular speaker at esteemed conferences for Stanford University, Global Big Data Conference, NFC forums, European Identity Conference, KNOW Identity Conference, Global Retail Conference in Canada, IOT conference and others. Featured in Genius Journal, he helped pioneer blockchain in Amex and filed patents on blockchain and DLTs. He and his team worked on IOT security and payments and participated in several industry standard bodies like EMV,Global Platform, PCI-DSS, FIDO, etc.

He is an advisory board director for select security startups and helps venture capitalists evaluate companies. He holds an MBA from Santa Clara University, California and Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science from VNIT, Nagpur, India. He is credited with 95+ patents issued and pending and has received awards for innovation and leadership.