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Louise Holden

Louise Holden

Founder and Principal, Ad Pontem Advisory
Louise Holden is the founder of Ad Pontem Advisory, which advises fintechs, challenger banks and financial infrastructure businesses on partnerships, commercial growth and market entry. She has spent her career in payments, in senior roles at Barclaycard, American Express, Mastercard and Visa. Most recently she was Global Head of Partnerships at Visa Government Solutions, where she built the function from nothing to $90M+ in annualised revenue across 50+ markets. Much of that work has been in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. She worked in South Africa and Egypt, including a lead consulting role with Nedbank and nine months embedded at Banque Misr in Cairo. She negotiated with the Government of Rwanda on health digitisation, and worked with the World Food Programme, UN agencies and local fintechs to get digital payments to people outside the formal financial system. That included a digital cash programme reaching more than a million refugees. She wrote Mastercard's first Financial Inclusion Playbook, and today advises fintechs building in and from these markets. Outside work, she is a charity trustee and a competitive squash player

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