Independent payments consultant based in Warsaw, Poland. Fourteen years in card payments across acquiring, card networks and dispute management. I have sat on the commercial leadership side of two acquisitions, Ethoca's by Mastercard and ChargebackHelp's by Global Payments, and I now work independently with payments companies in Europe and North America.
Sales and revenue leadership, channel partnerships, and fraud and chargeback strategy, done by someone who has carried the number.
Commercial leadership for payments, risk and fintech companies, for a defined period or a defined problem. Most of my clients are founders and leadership teams who need someone with operator experience to lead revenue, open a channel or fix a dispute problem, without waiting for a full-time hire.
Revenue and go-to-market leadership
Interim or fractional leadership of sales and revenue: strategy, pipeline, pricing, hiring and coaching the team, and the reporting a board or an acquirer expects to see.
Channel and partner programs
Distribution through acquirers, ISOs, PSPs, payment facilitators and platforms, from partner selection and commercial terms to enablement, co-selling and conference presence.
Fraud, chargeback and dispute strategy
Fewer disputes and less first-party fraud using the whole toolkit: pre-dispute deflection, alerts, representment and clear billing descriptors, while staying within the card networks' monitoring programs.
Growth through an acquisition
Getting a company ready to be acquired, supporting commercial due diligence, and integrating sales teams, partners and customers once the deal closes.
From a payment gateway sales floor in Reading to two acquisitions.
2022 - present: ChargebackHelp, now part of Global Payments
Revenue leadership, Warsaw and remote. Led the commercial side of a dispute-management platform (pre-dispute deflection, real-time alerts and automated representment) serving merchants, acquirers, ISOs and PSPs, through the business becoming part of Global Payments. I remain engaged with the business today.
2014 - 2022: Ethoca, acquired by Mastercard in 2019
Channel sales, EMEA (London, Frankfurt, Warsaw). Joined the London team in market development and went on to lead channel sales across EMEA, first from Frankfurt and then from Warsaw, bringing acquirers, PSPs and partners onto Ethoca's issuer and merchant collaboration network. Stayed through the Mastercard acquisition and led EMEA channel partnerships inside Mastercard until 2022.
2012 - 2014: Visa, Authorize.Net payment gateway (a CyberSource company)
EMEA sales team lead, Reading, UK. Led the EMEA sales team for the payment gateway, working directly with acquiring banks to get UK and European merchants processing online, and covering underwriting, partner relationships and pricing along the way. Recognised as employee of the year.
2011 - 2012: Rackspace and Apple
Technical foundations, UK. Hosting support (servers, DNS and SSL) at Rackspace and business solutions consulting at Apple. The technical grounding behind how I work with product and integration teams today.
Client names stay confidential. The kinds of businesses do not:
Dispute-management and fraud-prevention platforms selling to merchants, acquirers and PSPs
Merchant acquiring, ISO and agent businesses in the United States and Europe, including higher-risk e-commerce verticals
Payment-intelligence companies giving merchants one view of their data across acquirers, PSPs and orchestration layers
Billing-descriptor and consumer-clarity services that resolve confusion before it becomes a dispute
Early-stage fintech founders who need a commercial lead before they can hire one
Teams preparing for, or integrating after, an acquisition
You will also find me at the industry's main gatherings in Europe, Money20/20 Europe, Affiliate World and TES among them.
Educated in Canada, the United States and the UK. Home is near Warsaw. English and Polish are native languages, with basic German.
Education
BSc (Hons) Computing and ICT, The Open University, 2015
BSc Computer Science, Brigham Young University - Idaho, 2010, with a minor in ballroom dance
Areas of depth
E-commerce payments, acquiring and gateways
Chargebacks, disputes and first-party fraud
Channel sales and partnerships across EMEA and North America
Team leadership and sales management
Let's talk about your revenue, your channel or your disputes. For consulting engagements, partnerships or speaking, email is the quickest way to reach me. I reply from Warsaw, usually within a working day.
Email: bart@szypkowski.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bartszypko
Location: Warsaw, Poland (CET)
Engagements are contracted through my own consulting company, registered in Poland.