“Banking and retail are experiencing unprecedented change and, while the digitalization of payments represents significant opportunities, each stakeholder must overcome a range of challenges,” comments Lionel Grosclaude, CEO at FIME. “Banks must balance the need to transform their strategies and infrastructures for long-term success, while ensuring short-term revenue growth. Retailers and merchants need to make increasingly complex strategic decisions to reduce costs and increase revenues in today’s omnichannel world, but with margins constantly squeezed, it is difficult to know where to focus resources.”

New talents bringing new strategic support to banks & retailers

Arnaud will head up FIME’s security and consultancy offerings, helping banks and merchants to secure, automate and digitize payments while improving the buying experience. For the last eight years he has been in charge of payments strategy at Auchan Group, the world’s 11th largest food retailer. He is also General Secretary of nexo standards, the association dedicated to delivering fast, interoperable and borderless card payment acceptance, and previously worked for American Express Group and Ingenico. Arnaud holds a degree in telecom engineering from EPITA and an executive MBA in business strategy and management from CNAM Paris.

“This is an extremely exciting time to join FIME,” adds Arnaud. “Regulations, standards and new technologies are changing the game, and key stakeholders are completely reevaluating their roles in the payments ecosystem. FIME is perfectly placed to support banks and merchants throughout every stage of their digital transformation projects. Our consultants, engineers and testing experts are removing pain and friction from payments and helping our customers to deliver richer, more secure omnichannel buying experiences. I look forward to collaborating with my new colleagues.”

Edouard Baroin joins FIME to support banks, merchants and other payment ecosystem stakeholders to define and launch the best solutions for their customers and their business models. He brings extensive consultancy experience to FIME, having led teams at Deloitte, Beobank and Eurogroup Consulting. He holds a degree in mathematical sciences and an MBA in corporate finance.

“We enable our customers to innovate in a secure and sustainable way. Testing and compliance are therefore essential, but on many projects we are helping to define the future of payments and standards are yet to catch up. This is where our expertise and consultancy comes in,” concludes Lionel. “The arrival of Arnaud and Edouard is another step towards excellence as we revolutionize our consultancy offering and app security testing methodologies. We have some important new services to launch this year to help our customers define, design, develop, validate and launch new products and services, so please join me in welcoming Arnaud and Edouard to help us achieve our ambitious goals.”