Stefania Bonà

Senior Director, Payment Products

London, England, United Kingdom

About

I build and scale AI-powered payment products that protect revenue, improve customer experience and turn data into commercial impact. I am a global product leader with 13 years of experience across artificial intelligence, machine learning, risk, data, payments, and e-commerce. At Visa, I lead the development and adoption of open banking payment products that help shape the future of payments to support Visa 2030 vision. My experience includes 9+ years launching products and features across 48 countries, 13+ years in payments, e-commerce, risk, and data, 9+ years in full-stack development and team leadership, and 7+ years in SaaS. Beyond my core role, I am a data scientist, lecturer, and mentor focussed on training the first generation of AI-native product managers - leaders who blend product thinking, data, AI, and commercial strategy to build the next wave of intelligent products. I am passionate about helping product, data, and fintech leaders thrive in an AI world.

Experience

  • Visa (London Area, United Kingdom)
    • Senior Director, Head of Open Banking Payment Products
      Nov 2025 - Present · 8 mos

      I’m part of the Open Banking team, focussed on delivering Visa global open banking vision, developing innovative, secure and scalable Pay-by-Bank payment solutions. Our mission is to empower individuals, businesses and economies through technology that makes payments cheaper, simpler, faster and more inclusive. I lead across multiple teams - including product, engineering, data science and commercial - defining strategy, managing development and driving global adoption and expansion of open banking-powered payment products.

    • Director, Payment Products (Pay-by-Bank & Risk)
      Feb 2025 - Oct 2025 · 9 mos

  • Lead Instructor at BrainStation
    Jul 2025 - Present · 1 yr

    BrainStation is a global leader in digital skills training, helping individuals and organisations build hands-on, industry-driven expertise in technology, design, marketing, and product. As a Lead Instructor at BrainStation, I teach and mentor recent graduates and professionals in Product Management, Product Leadership, and AI for Product Managers, helping them turn ideas into real-world solutions. I bridge theory and practice, sharing insights from my own experience and creating a collaborative learning environment where students can grow their skills and confidence. I am passionate about shaping the first generation of AI-native product leaders - professionals who combine product thinking, data, AI, and commercial strategy to thrive in today’s fast-moving landscape.

  • Trustly (London Area, United Kingdom)
    • Head of AI Products
      Mar 2024 - Feb 2025 · 1 yr

      Trustly is a leader in open banking in North America, offering merchants a payment guarantee product (insurance) designed to protect against abuse, credit, and fraud risk. In 2023, we made the strategic decision to end our contract with a profit-and-loss-sharing payment processing provider. By leveraging proprietary machine learning and graph technologies, my team and I helped quadruple Trustly’s revenue, while becoming fully responsible for gains and losses. At Trustly, I led the strategy, roadmap and goal-setting across 8 functions: Engineering, Data Science, Machine Learning Engineering, Analytics, Collections, Operations, Data, and Platform. In particular, I built and scaled the Machine Learning Engineering function from the ground up and oversaw existing and future products with a combined annual payment volume of $58 billion in 2023. During my tenure, I managed a team of 3 Product Managers and led a 55-person organisation across technology and operations.

    • Lead Product Manager - Data Science, Machine Learning Engineering & Analytics
      Feb 2022 - Mar 2024 · 2 yrs 2 mos

  • Visiting Lecturer at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
    Feb 2024 - Jan 2025 · 1 yr

    I was appointed as a lecturer for the 2024/2025 academic year, delivering seminars on Product Management, Data Science, Fintech, and strategies for navigating the UK job market.

  • Checkout.com (London Area, United Kingdom)
    • Senior Product Manager - Data Science & Machine Learning Engineering
      Sep 2021 - Feb 2022 · 6 mos

      At Checkout.com, a leading Payment Service Provider (PSP) serving enterprise merchants, I was the Senior Product Leader responsible for the Data Science and Machine Learning Engineering teams. I built and led a team of 7 data scientists and 3 machine learning engineers, driving the roadmap for strategic initiatives including: • Fraud detection: Built a new proprietary machine learning product to help merchants protect against fraud and make payment processing decisions aligned with their risk appetite. • Traffic forecasting and segmentation: Developed forecasting and segmentation capabilities to support company scalability, operational planning and growth. • Dispute management: Built a predictive analytics solution to anticipate dispute outcomes, improve the merchant experience and support more effective chargeback management. With over 8 years of specialised expertise in data, fraud and risk management, I also acted as a strategic advisor to teams across the organisation. I played a key role in hiring, redesigned the interview process for Data Science and Machine Learning Engineering roles and helped build teams with 50/50 gender representation.

    • Product Manager
      Feb 2020 - Aug 2021 · 1 yr 7 mos