About the Author: Rich Wagner, CEO and Founder, APS Rich has over 30 years’ experience in both the payments industry, having held leading roles across both Visa and Barclaycard, before forming his own FinTech payments enterprise APS in 2004. Today APS is one of the largest non-bank e-money issuers in the UK – providing digital current account and payment solutions to consumers, SMEs and the Public Sector. Rich has a long history of battling traditional barriers in the financial services space to make room for alternative players. Rich fought for APS to become the first non-bank issuer to gain MasterCard membership in 2007 and last year became the first non-bank to sync up with the Post Office to offer banking services. An advisory board member of the Emerging Payments Association since 2014, Rich now serves as the organisation’s chairman – active January 2016. As part of this role, Rich is passionate about fighting for non-banks to gain access to traditional payment infrastructure. 14 | Payment infrastructure: a call for fair and equal access for FinTech