SPEAKERS

Simon Anko is Director of the Payment and Settlement Systems Department at the Bank of Slovenia. He graduated from the Faculty of Economics in Ljubljana in 1997 and obtained his Master's degree from the same faculty in 2004. He joined the Bank of Slovenia in October 1997. He has also worked in the field of payment systems at the European Central Bank. He is Chairman of the National Payments Council, publishes articles in professional periodicals, is a member of the ECB's Committee on Market Infrastructures and Payments and is active in the Payment Transport Committee of the Association of Banks of Slovenia.

Stanislava Zadravec Caprirolo is, since July 2017 Director of the Bank Association of Slovenia and a Member of Executive Board of European Banking Federation. In the period of April 2016 to July 2017 she was Strategic Adviser to the Governor of the Bank of Slovenia and Chief Compliance Officer. From April 2010 to April 2016 she was Vice Governor of the Bank of Slovenia, which is responsible authority also for banking supervision and financial stability. She was a Member of SSM ECB Supervisory Board, nonvoting Member of ESRB, Member of National Systemic Risk Board, Member of ECB Ethics Framework TF and member of EBA. From 2014 to 2017 se was also Program Board Member of European Supervisor Education Initiative

She is former Director General of Treasury of the Ministry of Finance (2005 – 2009), from 1998 to 2005 she was State Undersecretary at the Ministry of Finance, responsible for the state debt management, liquidity management and state guarantees. During the period of 2003 to 2009 she was also a Member of EFC T-Bills and Bonds Working Group. She also has short term working experience in the World Bank. She started her career in 1989 in the Central Bank of the Republic of Slovenia. 

She was member of Supervisory  boards of two banks, member of different national governmental and other strategic or policy making working bodies as well as member of an expert group on public finance, participating in different forms of consultancy activities in the CEE and North Africa region (including for Regional Center for Excellence in Finance and IMF).

She holds a Master degree in International Affairs (Economic Policy Management), Columbia University, New York and Bachelor degree in Law, Ljubljana University 

Matej Kurent has more than 15 years of experience in leading positions in IT sales and consulting services in major corporations (Hewlett Packard, Microsoft) and smaller companies. Most of the time he has been involved in the banking industry, but above all he has been following with interest both the trends and regulatory changes in the industry and the "drivers" of these changes. As Sales Director at Bankart, he is in charge of selling Bankart's services, with a strong focus on selling and "evangelising" services in the field of open banking, instant payments, etc. 

Matej has a degree in Information Technology from the University of Applied Sciences Jyväskylä (Finland) and an MBA from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Ljubljana, where he is currently completing his Master's thesis on PSD2 and Open Banking.

Martina Weimert has been appointed as CEO of the EPI Interim Company in December 2020. She has been supporting European banks since the beginning of the European Payments Initiative (EPI) as a Partner in the Financial Services Practice of the consultancy Oliver Wyman in Paris, where she was for 4 years in charge of the European payments practice. With 17 years in international consulting, she has in-depth experience in payments, fintech, blockchain and retail banking in Europe, the Americas and the Middle East. 

She developed strategy concepts, new business models and led major transformation programs and is known to be an instant payments specialist. She works with all players in the payments value chain: banks, retailers, merchant service providers, e-merchants, fintechs, infrastructure providers, PSP and regulators and she speaks at international conferences about payments, fintech and blockchain.

From 1999-2004, she was charge of business development and then head of marketing & sales in a greenfield-bank approach for Deutsche Bank. She started her career at the EBRD, in London before entering into consulting. 

Martina Weimert graduated from the Institute of Political Science Paris in European business development and holds a Master degree in International Administration (DESS) from Sorbonne University and studied before Political Science at the University of Bonn (Germany).

With 20+ years’ experience in banking and electronic payments, Elena Oprea has a solid expertise in banking industry, namely: new product development and product management, marketing, business intelligence, cards operations and was business owner of strategic projects with high business and P&L impact for cards and digital channels. 

As Director of Visa for Slovenia, Romania, Croatia and Bulgaria, Elena is directly involved in the business initiative for acceptance development in the four countries, coordinates in the field the deployment of innovative acceptance solutions and partnerships with merchants and acquirers.

Boris has been Director of Public Policy for Hungary and Slovenia at Mastercard since May 2018. He is responsible for the development and implementation of Mastercard’s local public policy strategy in Hungary and Slovenia, as well as the local execution of Mastercard’s European and global public policy agenda. In his work at Mastercard his main focus has been the reduction of shadow economy through electronic payments, promotion of financial awareness and digitalization both at national and local levels, enablement of smart city collaborations with local authorities, and public policy support for the topics of instant payments and strong customer authentication (PSD2).

Prior to joining Mastercard, Boris worked for ten years at the Hungarian Competition Authority, first in antitrust, and later in merger control, where he was Head of Merger Section for a year. Boris graduated from the Budapest Corvinus University in 2008, acquiring a masters degree in finance. He later studied public policy in Tokyo between 2014 and 2015. Outside of work his two primary hobbies are literary writing (Boris is a published author of fiction in Hungary) and martial arts (kenjutsu).

Janko Medja graduated from the Economics Faculty of the University of Ljubljana and from the IEDC Bled School of Management where he obtained an Executive MBA. He spent most of his career, 11 years, with Unicredit Banka Slovenija, where he was a management board member, in charge of corporate and investment banking, during the years 2008 and 2012. In 2012 he was recognized as "The young manager of the year"  by the Slovene Managers Association. Between 2012 and 2016 he led the NLB banking group as the Chair of the managing board and CEO, and successfully navigated the challenges of business and financial restructuring of the bank and the banking group. He was an active member of several banking supervisory boards in Slovenia and abroad. Nowadays as a co-founder of the fintech Leanpay, he focuses on business development as well as the growth and development of Leanpay's merchant and financial institution partnerships.

Primož Zupan is the first idea manager in Slovenia, who used the Halcom internal incubator to help the idea of the first Slovenian mobile wallet – mBills to come from an independent product to an established spin-off company MBILLS d.o.o., one of the prominent fintech companies in Slovenia. Primož Zupan has been the Director of said company since 1 January 2017.

The advantages of the entrepreneurial idea and mBills as an independent payment platform have been recognised by the Petrol company which have increased their majority share to 100% ownership share of MBILLS in 2020. The same year, the mBills mobile wallet issued its own payment card, and as one of the first in Slovenia offered its users the option of payment via Apple Pay, Garmin Pay and Fitbit Pay. In the beginning of 2021, they offered their users the option of ordering an authorised card for children, the so-called mBills Mini. 

MBILLS have been realising open banking since 2018 by implementing direct integration with the Sberbank Bank as well as implementation of services according to the new PSD2 Directive for the Payment Initiation Service (PIS) and Account Information Service (AIS) in production at the customers’ transaction account of the following banks: NLB, NKBM, Gorenjska banka, Sparkasse and SKB. In 2020, MBILLS launched their own marketplace service and successfully implemented the introduction of issuing e-money and performing payment services in all of the EU member states (i.e. passporting permits).

Before taking over the management of the MBILLS company, Primož Zupan built his career as an idea manager at the Halcom company, as a Director of Sales at the Salviol IT company, as Head of Office for the Minister of Labour, Family and Social Affairs, and as a sales representative at IBM Slovenija. Primož Zupan is distinguished by his great passion for work, optimism, accessibility, care for his colleagues and strong social capital. He spends his leisure time developing innovative culture in various organisations.   

Mag. Nataša Tomc Jovović is employed at NLB d.d. in Development and Sales Management as a business director of Cards and Payments department. She embarked on her business path at NLB, gaining experience as a development technologist for the area of loans for natural persons, later as a manager of service development and sales support for companies, and as an adviser in the developmental area of cards and payments. Nataša Tomc Jovović collaborated on the project of introducing mortgage banking and managed the business part of the project of introducing chip cards and loyalty plan on the chip cards. Between 2008 and 2012 she functioned as the Director of the Marketing Sector, where she gained valuable experience in the area of business analytics, segmented management and advertising as well as corporate communication. She returned to the field of cards in 2012 as a business director to this day. She is the President of the Cards and Payment Committee at the Bank Association of Slovenia (ZBS), where she actively strives for suitable positioning and development of the area.

Inna is responsible for product management in SIA CE, Nexi Group. Her primary focus is on POS acquiring services. She is country ambassador for EWPN – European Women Payments Network. Fintech for her is not just a job, it is a passion and hobby too. She shares her spare time between her family and love for reading and writing fintech news. 

He is a partner and Research and Development Director at E-laborat. He has been involved in research for a number of years, first as a media analyst at Kliping, then as Head of Analysis and finally as Head of Production and Quality. He has worked as a freelancer on many research projects in Slovenia, and for the last twelve years has been intensively involved in Internet research and the use of basic and advanced analytical tools to measure the effectiveness of online presence. He is an expert in web analytics, user experience, website design and digital business.

For 15 years he has been leading industry analysis for the banking, insurance and other digital industries. He heads the UX Lab at the User Experience Agency, where they focus on design, analysis and optimization of digital processes. 

He is also a qualified DIMAQ trainer and a renowned digital business and digital marketing consultant.