Marion King has extensive experience across the financial services industry. She joined NatWest in 2015 as Director of Payments and is responsible for setting the payment strategy. Her remit is wide and includes NatWest payment architecture, operations and innovation. She joined from MasterCard where she was President, UK & Ireland and responsible for growing the business and creating a world beyond cash through an innovative approach to everyday payments, including emerging technologies such as contactless and mobile. Marion is chair of the Emerging Payments Association.
Q&A:
If we could grant you three wishes what would they be?
The first wish would be to see the successful completion of the global COVID19 vaccine programme, children back in school continuing their education, families and friends enjoying each other’s company improving society’s wellbeing and mental health and businesses back at work, enabling economies to thrive. The pandemic has accelerated the use of digital and my second wish is to ensure everyone has the same opportunities to benefit from digital payments, using the methods that suit them, so it is critical our industry works together to support the transition to these online channels and to make sure that no one is digitally excluded. My final wish would be for the payments industry to be recognised as putting our customers at the heart of everything we do through our collaborative approach which has brought about purposeful change.
Where do you see the payments industry going in the future?
I am confident that the payments industry is going in the right direction. I recently had the privilege of chairing the UK Finance Payments Futures Strategy Project working with more than 100 practitioners from over 40 firms, The Bank of England and regulators to deliver a 10 year vision for Payments. Rather than reflect the views of our own organisations, our contributors shared individual expertise, knowledge and ideas to help shape a dynamic, purposeful, united agenda for UK Payments. The result is the Future Ready Payments 2030 report which shows how the industry, working in collaboration, is focussed on delivering customer benefits through innovation whilst supporting competition.