Focus on Payments

Philipp von Restorff currently is Deputy CEO at Luxembourg for Finance (LFF), the agency for the development of the Luxembourg financial centre.

Prior to his appointment at LFF, he was serving as Head of Communication of The Luxembourg Bankers’ Association (ABBL), where he also held the position of Secretary of the Board of Directors.  Philipp has been Chairman of the European Banking Federation’s Communication and CSR Steering Committee from 2014-2018. Before joining the ABBL he worked for the Luxembourg Information and Press Services of the Luxembourg Ministry of State. 

He is elected member of the Board of Directors of LuxFLAG, the Luxembourg Finance Labelling Agency, as well as of the Luxembourg Sustainable Finance Initiative. Philipp is lecturer at the Luxembourg House of Training and financial education volunteer at “Jonk Entrepreneuren Luxembourg”, a branch of the Junior Achievement Network (JA).

Chief Executive Officer Simon has led PPRO through a period of growth which has seen the company attract investment from industry giants such as PayPal and acquire Latin American payments specialist allpago to become one of the leaders of the digital-payments revolution. Simon joined PPRO as CEO in March 2015 following a decade with Sage Group PLC.

As CEO at Sage Pay, Simon steered the company through a period of dramatic growth to become the UK’s biggest payment gateway for SMEs. He also led the creation of Sage One, the leading online accounting and payroll application. In his early career, he founded a marketing software start-up as well as holding senior strategy and brand consulting roles both in the USA and in the UK.

Thibault de Barsy is the Vice-Chairman and General Manager of the Emerging Payments Association EU.

Thibault has launched the Emerging Payments Association EU (EPA EU)  in February 2020. It is a non-profit association of payments industry influencers based in Luxembourg. EPA EU builds on the international network of its London-based sister organisation, the Emerging Payments Association (EPA), consisting of 150 members from across the payments value chain.

Thibault was formerly CEO of Keytrade Bank Luxembourg for 5 years and has over 20 years of experience in the financial and ICT sector. Thibault is also a guest lecturer at the University of Luxembourg on “Managing Financial Brands in the Digital Era” and at the Solvay Brussels of Economics and Management. Since October 2019, he has participated as a weekly guest speaker on the Belgian news TV channel LN24 as an Economics columnist.

Before settling in Luxembourg, he held different marketing & sales positions across banks, insurance, telco and credit card companies.

Thibault holds a Master of Science in Management from the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management and a CEFA certificate from the Belgian Association of Financial Analysts.

Karen O’Sullivan is head of the Innovation, payments, market infrastructures and governance Department at the CSSF.

She coordinates the activities of this department which is responsible for financial innovation, both the application process and on-going prudential supervision of payment institutions and electronic money institutions, market infrastructures and the oversight of remuneration and governance practices and policies implemented within financial institutions.

Being the department in charge of financial innovation means that Karen and her team are the privileged contact and point of entry to the CSSF for the FinTech industry.

She represents the CSSF on an international level through participation in various working sub-groups and as speaker at several conferences, covering payment services, remuneration policies and corporate governance matters at both national and international level

Karen is both an Irish and Luxembourgish qualified chartered accountant. Prior to joining the CSSF in September 2012, Karen was an audit director at PwC Luxembourg specializing in the audit of investment funds.