JUSPAY’s James Lloyd on the future of payments

The global financial landscape is in the midst of a silent but significant revolution. As traditional financial institutions and nimble fintechs vie for supremacy, the underlying infrastructure that powers digital payments is becoming the new frontier. In this ‘great fintech infrastructure race,’ as it has been dubbed, the lessons learned from one region can become the blueprint for another.

Bobsguide sat down with James Lloyd, Senior Director – International at JUSPAY, to know more about the company’s unique approach and perspective on the future of payments.

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From Management Consulting to Payments ‘Nerd’

James Lloyd’s journey into the world of payments began almost two decades ago as a management consultant. A chance encounter with an Irish e-commerce payment gateway sparked a career-long passion. This led him to roles at EY, where he led the fintech and payments team for Asia Pacific, and Citibank, where he headed a new merchant services business. His experience across advisory, startup and investment roles has given him a comprehensive perspective on the industry.

This wealth of experience, particularly his time in Asia, is what drew him to JUSPAY. He had first encountered the company while at Citibank in Asia and was impressed with what the team had built. The opportunity to be centrally involved in JUSPAY’s international expansion was a chance he jumped at.

JUSPAY’s Indian Foundation for Global Expansion

JUSPAY, a global payments technology company, has spent its first decade focused on the Indian market, which remains its largest. The company’s work in India involves supporting large enterprise clients and domestic banks with a range of payment infrastructure services, including payment orchestration, intelligent routing, tokenization, APM (Alternate Payment Methods) integration, fraud solutions, 3D Secure Services, RTP (Real-Time Payments) infrastructure, and more.

The unique proposition of JUSPAY’s technology stack is rooted in its experience operating at scale in India. The company handles an impressive 300 million transactions a day and processes an annual total of $900 billion in payments (TPV). Operating in a large, complex, and low-margin market like India has forced the team to be incredibly efficient, with a constant focus on code refactoring and optimizing infrastructure. The company is now leveraging this technical talent and capability to solve “hard problems at scale” in international markets like Europe, North America, APAC, MENA, and Latin America, serving global leaders like Agoda, Amazon, Google, IndiGo Airlines, and more.

Learning from the Leapfrog Effect

Lloyd’s time in Asia has given him a unique viewpoint on the ‘great fintech infrastructure race’. He observes that while Europe and North America have mature credit card markets and real-time payment systems, many countries in Asia have experienced a “leapfrog effect”. The introduction of systems like India’s UPI (Unified Payment Interface) and Brazil’s Pix have bypassed legacy systems and are now providing valuable lessons to the rest of the world. Lloyd sees this as a matter of “competition and collaboration,” with each region learning from the other.

The Future is AI-Driven and Interoperable

JUSPAY is not standing still. The company is heavily focused on emerging technologies, particularly AI and LLMs, to build the next generation of services. James notes that they are looking to solve “hard problems to solve at scale” and are building solutions for future challenges.

The company’s goal is to have a tangible impact on the global payment ecosystem by applying the services and capabilities developed in India to other regions. A key area of focus is inter-region interoperability, particularly for real-time payments. Lloyd’s advice to fintech leaders in the UK and US is to spend more time in other parts of the world to gain a broader view and learn from the challenges and successes of different markets. The future, according to Lloyd, will be defined by constant evolution, and anticipating the next big disruption will be key to staying ahead.

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• Artificial Intelligence
• BankingTech