Yakiv Smolii — Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) since 15 March 2018. Acting Governor of the NBU since 11 May 2017. First Deputy Governor of the NBU since October 2016. Before, he worked as NBU Deputy Governor. Member of the NBU Board since April 2014. Yakiv Smolii has been working in the banking system of Ukraine for more than 25 years, since its establishment after Ukraine’s got independence. In 1991-1994 he worked at the NBU Regional Office in Ternopil oblast. In 1994- 2005, he served as deputy chairman of the board at JS Postal Pension Bank Aval. In 2005-2014, held the office of Banking Business Director at Prestige-Group. Holds a PhD in Economics.

Harish is a Lead Financial Sector Specialist in the Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice at the World Bank. He leads a global team working on payments and market infrastructures topics. He is a core member of the cross-sectoral teams in the World Bank working on Universal Financial Access 2020, ID for Development, Government payments, Digital Economy and FinTech. Harish represents the World Bank in several working groups of the Committee on Payment Market Infrastructures (CPMI) at the Bank for International Settlements, International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) and the Financial Stability Board (FSB) on topics related to payments, market infrastructures and Fintech. Harish was a lead contributor to the preparation of the IMF-World Bank Bali Fintech Agenda and is a co-chair of a CPMI-World Bank taskforce on Payment Aspects of Financial Inclusion. Prior to joining the World Bank, Harish worked with VISA Inc, in the South Asia region in various senior level positions in business development, operations and risk management. Prior to VISA, Harish worked in in Citigroup, Infosys and other technology companies, primarily in the areas of payment systems and retail banking. Harish holds an under-graduate degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from IIT-Madras, India and a Post Graduate Diploma in Management, from IIM-Calcutta, India specializing in IT systems and Finance.

Tanai Khiaonarong is a Senior Financial Sector Expert in the Monetary and Capital Markets Department of the International Monetary Fund. He was the IMF representative in the FSB Financial Innovation Network (2017), CPMI/World Bank Task Force on Payment Aspects of Financial Inclusion (2014-16), and CPMI/IOSCO Joint Working Group on Digital Innovations (2016-current). He has led technical assistance missions on payment systems and served as an assessor of financial market infrastructures in financial sector assessment programs for many IMF member countries. FSAP mission experiences have included the Kingdom of Bahrain, Republic of Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Republic of Moldova, Norway, and Singapore. He has authored publications on oversight issues in mobile payments, fintech and financial services, recent trends in correspondent banking relationships, cash use and the demand for central bank digital currency, and fintech and payments regulation (forthcoming).

Deputy Governor of the NBU since 23 July 2018. His mandate is the development and regulation of payment and settlement systems, and the management of the cash circulation system. Sergii Kholod has worked in Ukraine’s banking system for 28 years. Sergii Kholod started his career in 1991 as senior electronics engineer in the design and technology of telecommunications department within the IT center at Prombudbank. In 2002 – 2007, he chaired the IT office at Raiffeisenbank Ukraine JSC (renamed to OTP Bank CJSC in 2006).For the next three years, he was the director of IT at Index Bank JSC (Credit Agricole Group). In 2009, Sergii Kholod was appointed operations director, then first deputy chairman of the board and a member of the board of SWEDBANK PJSC. In 2013, he was deputy chairman of the board at TASCOMBANK JSC. In 2013–2014, he was a member of the board of Brokbiznesbank PJSC. Before joining the NBU, Sergii Kholod spent five years working as deputy chairman of the board and a member of the board at VТB Bank PJSC. Sergii Kholod has two degrees: in Economics from the Kyiv National Economics University, where he majored in Finance and Credit, and in Engineering from the Kyiv Higher Military Aviation Engineering College, where he majored in Avionics.

Gerhard’s career started in information technology (IT) when he realised that studying law was not for him and he ended taking up Cobol instead. This led to him joining an army of programmers preparing for Y2K in 1998 - initiating a career that involved identifying and managing IT risk. He moved to IT audit in 2005 as an external auditor (KPMG) and then as an internal auditor (Nedbank and the South African Revenue Services). Gerhard is committed to lifelong learning and has completed undergraduate degrees in the humanities as well as in financial- and IT management. These qualifications he gained by studying on a part-time bases. He holds an honours degree in Informatics, a M.A. in Strategic Foresight (which covered scenario planning and other futures studies) and holds an MBA from the Henley Business School (University of Reading). Gerhard is currently studying an MSc in Finance, focussed on banking, at University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. In addition, he also holds professional qualifications from both ISACA (CISA and CRISC) and the Institute of Internal Auditors (CIA and CRMA). Gerhard started with the South African Reserve Bank in July of 2013 as a Senior IT Risk Analyst within the Bank Supervision Department where he worked as part of the team responsible for regulating and supervising the country’s banking industry from a technology risk perspective. He was the primary drafter of the Department’s 2014 guidance note on outsourcing and as well as its position paper on cloud computing. Gerhard was a founding member of the SARB’s Fintech Unit in 2017. Some of his fintech highlights includes being part of the Bank’s virtual currency task team from its inception in 2016. He has been involved in hosting several cyber and innovation related conferences and workshops since 2016. Gerhard is the product owner for Project Khokha, considering wholesale central bank digital currency, as well as the project establishing an inter-regulatory innovation hub among members of the Intergovernmental Fintech Working Group. He would consider himself a budding futurist and likes to consider how disruptive innovation may affect the status quo.

Roman Hartinger is the Head of Division for Innovative Projects of the Payment Systems and Innovative Development Department. Mr Hartiger has more than 10-year experience in the central bank ranging from payment system methodology to project management. Now Roman Hartinger focuses on innovative projects for payment systems. One of such projects is exploring the possibility of issuing the e-hryvnia, a digital currency of the central bank Furthermore, Mr Hartinger conducts research and in 2014 was awarded a PhD in Economics (research paper Development of the Bank Payment Cards Market in Ukraine), and has published 18 articles.

Dr. Hendry was appointed Senior Special Director of Financial Technology (FinTech) in the Funds Management and Banking Department of the Bank of Canada in June 2016. In this role, he oversees the Bank’s efforts to monitor and research developments and implications of new technologies affecting the financial sector. He previously held the role of Director of Research in the Funds Management and Banking Department and, before that, for the Financial Markets Department. Dr. Hendry’s personal research has focused on central bank digital currency, electronic money, price discovery in the Canadian government bond market, and central bank communication. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Western Ontario.

Björn Segendorf is senior adviser at the Payment Department at Sveriges Riksbank. His main areas of expertise are retail payments, financial infrastructure and related policy issues, e.g. FinTech and innovation, the entry of non-banks and the cashless society. Björn has been leading the economic analytical work in the Riksbank’s central bank digital currency project (the e-krona) and acted as editor of the first e-krona project report. He is a member of the ECBS Market Infrastructure and Payments Committee and has earlier participated in various BIS working groups.

Adolfo Sarmiento is Head of Economic Policy and Markets, advising to the board at the Central Bank of Uruguay, he is responsible for the Monetary Policy implementation, the payment system regulation and supervision, and he’s also involved in FinTech specially in the Digital Currency Project. As advisor he is also involved in the negotiation of MERCOSUR financial services issues and in Risk evaluation of the financial system. He holds a degree in Economics of the University of the Republic of Uruguay, a Master in Applied Macroeconomics of the Catholic University of Chile and is PhD (Candidate) for the Catholic University of Argentina.

Olha Vasylieva, Deputy Director of the Payment Systems and Innovations Department of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), specializes in the field of regulation of payment systems, retail payments, and card products. Olha has over 20 years of experience in Ukrainian banking sector and in auditing banks, out of which six past years she has been working at the NBU. In particular, her functions include research of central bank digital currency (CBDC), promotion of the development of innovative payment technologies on the market (GO FinTech project), as well as improvement of the NBU’s systems, i.e. PROSTIR National Payment System and the NBU’s BankID remote identification system. Olha Vasylieva holds Master’s degree in finance, majoring in banking.

Yuko Kawai is the General Manager for Europe for Bank of Japan, the central bank, since March 2018. She is in charge of research of economies and financial market/industry developments in Europe, Middle East and Africa. She joined Bank of Japan in 2003 and had served as the Head of FinTech center, Kochi branch manager, Head of Foreign Exchange Division, Chief Representative in Hong Kong and also took various roles in the Financial Markets and in the Financial System and Bank Examination Department. Her latest assignment before she was transferred to Europe was with the FinTech Centre, which conducted research of the related technologies and worked as the information hub amongst practitioners, researchers and other related parties.

Mr Aleksi Grym is Head of Digitalisation and advisor at the Bank of Finland. He manages a portfolio of projects which focus on the digital transformation of the financial industry, covering such topics as fintech, payment systems, digital currencies, distributed ledger technologies, and data analytics. Before joining the central bank he worked in the consulting and technology industry for 15 years in London and Helsinki. Mr Grym is Lic.Soc.Sc. (Economics) and M.Sc. (International Business) from the University of Turku and a Fulbright Scholar.

Pavlo Kravchenko, PhD in information security, cryptographer, CEO and founder of Distributed Lab - the development center of blockchain solutions for financial market. Distributed Lab team created the fintech 2.0 software development laboratory. Pavlo is the main author of a three-volume textbook for students of Ukrainian technical universities "Blockchain and Decentralized Systems", as well as the book "Financial Internet: Manual for Engineer".

Harro Boven is a Policy Advisor at the Dutch Central Bank. He works at the intersection of economics, policy and IT and is co-author of the Occasional Study on CBDC that the Dutch Central Bank will publish in spring of 2020. This study focuses on the key design choices, opportunities and risks of CBDC and will be published both in English and Dutch.

Sergii Vasylchuk – co-founder and managing partner of the blockchain R&D company AtticLab since 2016. In 2015 he managed the product development team building a blockchain platform to empower commercial banks to issue and process tokenized e-money (also known as stable coins). Later the same team headed by Sergii built a private distributed ledger for the National Bank of Ukraine as a part of a pilot project “e-hryvnia”, one of the first blockchain-based CBDC’s at the time. Sergii received a master’s degree in Computer Science from Kiev Polytechnic University. At least 10 year of software engineering dedicated to the development of payment processing, anti-fraud systems and other financial tools.

Makoto Takemiya is a co-founder and CEO of Soramitsu. He has authored more than 20 peer-reviewed scientific papers and actively engages in research. He has an M.S. in Computer Science from the California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo and is currently working towards his Ph.D. at the University of Tokyo. At Soramitsu he has helped lead the creation of Hyperledger Iroha, an instant payments system for the National Bank of Cambodia and a Decentralized Digital Depository for digital assets, called D3 Ledger.

Ryan Lackey is Chief Security Officer and member of the the Council of the Tezos Foundation. He has worked in computer security and cryptographic payment systems since the 1990s, starting with implementations of blinded tokens and decentralized applications. From there, he worked on trustworthy computing hardware and remote attestation in cloud computing, using Hardware Security Modules and platform security technology. He was co-founder of CryptoSeal, later sold to Cloudflare in 2014, where he worked as a product manager for security for several years. After more security consulting and product development, he joined the Tezos Foundation in 2018, where in addition to security he also works on infrastructure for Security Token Offerings.

Dr Ousmène Jacques Mandeng is a Senior Advisor with Accenture’s Global Blockchain Unit and co-leads its campaign for central bank digital currencies and thought leadership on the digital transformation in payments. He is a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Global Affairs at the London School of Economics and Political Science where he focuses on monetary innovation. He worked more than 20 years at the IMF and in finance. He is Member of the Bretton Woods Committee, Fellow of the Reinventing Bretton Woods Committee and Member of Robert Triffin International. He holds a PhD from the LSE.

Serhii Koptik. From 2000 to 2009 headed the development of card business in the banks of Belarus (Priorbank, Belargroprombank), Russia (Raiffeisen Bank), Ukraine (Raiffeisen Bank Aval). From 2009 to 2015 managed the promotion of Visa products in 17 countries. From 2015 to 2016 - Vice President of MasterCard (was in charge of business development in Belarus). From 2016 to 2019 - Head of Mobile financial service, Beeline, Kazakhstan. Since July 2019 - Director of Mobile financial service department, Kyivstar.

Head of Digital Channels and Retail Card Products Development Department in UKRSIBBANK JSC BNP Paribas (UKRSIBBANK). She has been working in banking for 20 years. She has worked in lending to small-sized businesses, sales, and was a Head of regional teams. Since 2018 she has been working in the development of Digital channels, CRM, Open banking, Payments, Cards. She is responsible for Agile products in UKRSIBBANK.

Dmytro Zarakhovych graduated from International Solomon University with a major in Finance and Credit, and from Kyiv Institute of International Relations with a major in International Monetary Relations. Dmytro has been more than 20 years in business, of which 17 years he has been holding managerial positions in IT and fintech. He is a co-owner and CEO of Softinvest Holding, a group of leading companies focusing on three major directions: e-commerce, payment solutions and IT system integration. Dmytro is also a managing partner of UAPAY (National Payment Service). In 2019 UAPAY participated in development of ideology and tariffs within a project of E-hryvnia implementation, the Ukrainian domestic digital currency, and was a settlement agent at UAPAY.UA payment service platform. He possesses deep knowledge in financial markets and has a wide expertise in integrated payment solutions for various payment platforms. Dmytro has participated multiple times in fintech conferences as a speaker and has been a mentor of many Ukrainian startups. Dmytro has become a leading initiator and promoter to develop Escrow service, absolutely new product at the Ukrainian financial market.

Kate Shcheglova-Goldfinch - senior PM on fintech strategy development at NBU, DeFi expert, TOP50 Global Fintech Thought Leaders Kate is a professional journalist with almost 20 years experience passionate about fintech, blockchain and decentralised finance. 12 years ago founded the Future magazine (Ukrainian media about fintech and digital economy - futuremagazine.io). In 2017 joined the team of London based publication The Fintech Times (thefintechtimes.com) as an Associated editor; within last 3 years was a regular participant, moderator and speaker at global fintech events, and in November 2019 was listed among TOP50 Global Fintech Thought Leaders by Thinkers360. In October 2019 joined NBU's team as a senior PM on fintech strategy development. At the present time Kate is designing the NBU's fintech strategy-2025 and the Regulatory sandbox concept, launching the first Ukrainian mini-MBA programme "Digital finance 4.0" supported by NBU and leading digital and payment providers. Kate is London Metropolitan University (MSc Strategic Marketing | Digital Communications) alumni - 2016.

Mihnea Constantinescu is Head of Research at the National Bank of Ukraine, Lecturer at CUREM - University of Zurich and Visiting Scholar at the Kyiv School of Economics. His experience includes a diverse range of professional roles in managerial and executive positions at various seniority levels in finance, real estate and central banking. Analytical work and research feature across all of his appointments in both private and public sector. Mihnea holds a doctorate degree in economics from the University of Zurich and a masters degree in quantitative finance jointly awarded by ETH Zurich and University of Zurich.

Anastasiya Shevchenko - an independent expert on fintech, author of the “Digital Era” (https://digitalera.com.ua/), independent fintech-expert, Founder and CEO of Fintech Solutions LLC, Co-founder of Let’sPartner fintech marketplace (https://www.letspartner.co/en/), General Manager of Lugera Ukraine (ex-Adecco, https://lugera.in.ua/).