Rishikesh R Tinaikar is the Head of Payments and Trade Markets, India & South Asia at Swift. He is responsible for the strategy and execution of Swift initiatives in the region across payments and trade markets. He drives the trade digitization agenda as part of the working group on digitization of trade finance under the aegis of the Indian Banks’ Association. He is also responsible for the payments transformation initiatives in both the high-value and retail payments sectors.

Rishikesh has more than 16 years of global experience in strategy and business development in the banking and financial services industry in the US, India & South Asia. In his prior role with IBM, he was consulting with major banking institutions on payments strategy. He has been involved in various roles with start-ups in India and US. Rishikesh has earned MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He also holds Masters in Electrical Engineering degree from the North Carolina State University, US and Bachelors in Electronics Engineering degree from University of Mumbai