 Speaker Biographies
Wayne Byres, Chair, APRA
Wayne Byres was appointed as a Member and Chair of APRA from 1 July 2014 for a five-year term. He was subsequently reappointed for a second five-year term commencing 1 July 2019.
Mr Byres' early career was in the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), which he joined in 1984. After more than a decade with the RBA, including a secondment to the Bank of England in London, he transferred to APRA on its establishment in 1998. Mr Byres subsequently held a range of senior executive positions in APRA, covering both its policy and supervisory divisions. In late 2011, Mr Byres left APRA to take up the appointment as Secretary General of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, the global standard setting body for banks based at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland. He held this position until his return to Australia in mid-2014.
Mr Byres is APRA’s representative on the Payments System Board, the Council of Financial Regulators, the Trans-Tasman Council on Banking Supervision, the Basel Committee and its oversight body, the Governors and Heads of Supervision.
Nick Abrahams, Global Co-leader, Digital Transformation, Norton Rose Fullbright
Nick Abrahams is the global co-leader of Norton Rose Fulbright’s digital transformation practice. He is the host of the popular webinar series Web3: From Mystery to Mainstreet which showcases how mainstream companies are embracing technologies like cryptocurrencies, DeFi, NFTs and the Metaverse.
He is heavily involved in the technology sector as a lawyer, advisor, non-executive director, entrepreneur and investor. Recently, Nick won the Financial Times Asia Pacific Legal Innovator of the Year Award and his group has won the Australian Technology Law Firm of the Year Award. Nick co-created the world's first AI-enabled privacy chatbot and co-founded Australia's leading online legal service, LawPath.
He is on the boards of: the TPG Foundation; the Sydney Film Festival; and, global leader in genomics, the Garvan Foundation. He was a director of ASX300 software company, Integrated Research for six years.
He is the author of the Kindle Best Selling books Digital Disruption in Australia and Big Data, Big Responsibilities: A guide to privacy and data security for Australian business.
Peter Cowan, Managing Director, PayPal Australia
Peter is passionate about payments. Starting when he was 16 years old with an assignment for high school economics on a cashless society, he has devoted his career to payment innovation. These days, Peter is an experienced leader with a track record of more than 25 years in the international and Australian eCommerce and payments sector across roles covering Business Development, Relationship Management, Product Management and Marketing.
Peter is Managing Director of PayPal Australia in this role he’s responsible for all PayPal’s products, merchant engagement and go to market functions in the local market.
Cynthia Scott, Managing Director, ZipCo
As managing director, Cynthia is responsible for the Australian and New Zealand businesses of Zip, a leading global Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) company providing fair and seamless solutions that simplify how people pay. Previously, Cynthia was the Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer at Scentre Group and Group Executive responsible for Telstra's New Business portfolio. Previous roles at Telstra include Group Managing Director of Strategic Finance (Strategy, M&A, Treasury and Investor Relations), and responsibility for Telstra’s international operations. Prior to Telstra, Cynthia spent over 20 years in investment banking, most recently at Barclays where her roles included Regional head of Debt CApital Markets in Hong Kong and CEO of Australia and New Zealand.
Cynthia was previously Chair of Foxtel, Telstra VEntures and Autohome, a US$10bn NYSE-listed Chinese technology company. She has also been a member of the Australian Advisory Board for Room to Read and served on the Board of the Sydney Women’s Fund.
Moderated by Camilla Bullock, CEO, Emerging Payments Association Asia
Camilla is the CEO and the co-founder of Emerging Payments Association Asia. Her role is to bring together the different participants in the value chain of payments for collaboration.
The core of the EPAA activities is policy and advocacy to enhance the industry. Camilla has a long career in the financial technology industry, starting in London in early 2000 working for Reuters (today LSEG) and often talks about coming home when she started her work in the payments industry.
Payments is the part of the financial service that touches peoples lives every day, and through EPA Asia work lives can be improved.
The payments industry offered her an opportunity to combine her passion for fintech and humanitarian questions.
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