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companies & people
Women Driving Payments Change
Best Advice
“As a manager, it’s important
to share your short- and long-term vision, so your team understands what your expectations are and can collaborate to get there.”
her trainers. She’s run the London Marathon twice and is always training for the next challenge. Although she doesn’t consider herself an athlete, Unsworth says running gives her a chance to mull over ideas no matter where she’s traveling. And, it helps her keep up with her two young children.
When it comes to her work babies, Unsworth says it’s just as impos- sible to pick favorites. She’s worked on everything from the Ticket Restaurant Card in France, which complements paper-based meal vouchers, to Debenham’s Beauty Club Card, a loyalty and reward product. “It’s nice to have some- thing you designed and put into
a lot of people’s wallets, but my passion really comes from the end-user experience. If I can imagine a way to make life easier, more exciting or more reward- ing, that’s what I’m focused on.”
As the prepaid industry faces consolidation, Unsworth is confident in PPS’s future. “We have a strong position with two very strong share- holders,” she notes. “Companies that focus on one thing or pick the
Tessa UnsworTh
Chief Commercial Officer, PrePay Solutions
Tessa Unsworth has been working in technology for more than 20 years, but at corporate events, male attendees sometimes think she’s her husband’s plus one.
That is, until she starts talking.
“Once you talk about the work
and your experiences, a lot of
that just melts away,” she says
of preconceived ideas. Unsworth doesn’t try to be “one of the guys,”
many of which are focused on expanding into virtual gift cards, particularly in the B2B space. But as chief commercial officer for the London-based payments technol- ogy company, Unsworth spends her days with many types of clients.
A large chunk of what she does involves Edenred, one of PPS’s parent companies (the other one is MasterCard). “Edenred is a signifi- cant client base for us—we support them in 16 of their 42 countries,
but whether she’s working with clients or colleagues, she does try to understand what the other person wants to achieve. “I put myself in their shoes and articulate what I’m talking about from their point of view,” she says.
A former IT manager at Deben- ham’s, Unsworth is particularly adept at understanding the needs of PrePay Solutions’ retail clients,
with lots of products in the local markets,” Unsworth explains. “Each one of their business units is a client, so I spend a lot of time with each business unit and the Paris headquarters on delivering solu- tions, payment strategy and a quality service.”
Endurance Test
Wherever the work takes her, Unsworth never leaves without
wrong thing may find they run out of money. But, we’re very diverse. And, we’re always looking for things that make a difference to the end user, as opposed to fads.
“We see ourselves less as working in prepaid and more as developing products that are part of everyday life,” Unsworth continues. “That’s what I believe we should be doing in payments.”
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