Millions of unseen transactions flow through the world’s digital veins every second. A coffee shop in São Paulo. A Dubai-based rental payment platform. London to Singapore via a cross-border wire. Most people never witness the complex choreography of technology, security, and human ingenuity that underlies these flawless moments. Roger Abouantoun has worked in this field for 17 years, honing his craft at the nexus of engineering and commerce, innovation and regulation, and security guards.
As a Founder and Director of Cedarium, an independent payments consultancy firm that guide fintech companies, merchants, issuers, processors, and acquirers toward better business outcomes, Roger operates in a space that demands both technical precision and strategic vision. The payments ecosystem is not a single system but a constellation of interconnected networks. Roger has worked at nearly every node in this network, building the invisible infrastructure that enables modern commerce. Yet what distinguishes him is his commitment to clarity. In an industry where knowledge often stays locked behind corporate walls, he has emerged as both practitioner and educator. His book Mastering Digital Payments breaks down complex systems into comprehensible frameworks. In a field racing forward at digital speed, Roger represents something increasingly rare: experienced clarity paired with generous knowledge sharing.
The Architecture of a Payments Career
Roger’s journey began with fascination. Early in his career, he discovered that payments represent far more than financial transactions. Each payment is a symphony of moving parts: engineering systems communicating in microseconds, security layers screening for threats, regulatory protocols ensuring compliance, and user interfaces designed to make complexity feel simple.
For someone with an engineering mindset, this wasn’t intimidating. It was irresistible.
Seventeen years later, that fascination has crystallized into comprehensive expertise across credit and debit card processing, eCommerce payments, Buy Now Pay Later solutions, Dynamic Currency Conversion, ATM networks, digital wallets, and real-time payment rails. The pace of change keeps him engaged. Real-time payment systems launch across new geographies. Digital wallets evolve from storage tools to financial command centers. Artificial intelligence transforms fraud detection from static rules to adaptive learning.
Building Bridges Through Knowledge
Throughout his career, Roger noticed the same problem: the payments industry holds vast knowledge, but that knowledge exists in fragments scattered across silos. Technical documentation lives with engineers. Business strategy stays with product teams. Regulatory expertise remains with compliance specialists. Talented professionals struggle to see how their piece connects to the whole.
Mastering Digital Payments book was born from this observation. Roger created a resource that assembles product foundations, business dynamics, regulatory frameworks, and emerging trends into a coherent structure. The book reflects what he wished he had possessed early in his career: a comprehensive map of the terrain he spent years exploring through trial and discovery.
The Transformation of Consumer Behaviour
During the span of 17 years, Roger has witnessed fundamental transformations. The most dramatic shift has been the migration from physical to purely digital experiences. What once required physical cards and terminals now happens invisibly on mobile devices. Consumers expect payments to be instantaneous and seamlessly integrated into digital life.
Choice and control represent the second seismic shift. Buy Now Pay Later has moved from a niche offering to a mainstream expectation because it grants users autonomy over financial decisions. Alternative payment methods have expanded explosively. Digital wallets, account-to-account transfers, and local payment schemes have captured significant market share.
Neobanks and fintech companies have fundamentally reset expectations. Revolut, N26, and similar players have demonstrated that financial services can be faster, more intuitive, and more transparent. This simplicity has elevated standards across the entire industry. The globalization of commerce has pushed consumers to expect frictionless cross-border transactions, with dynamic currency conversion and multi-currency pricing becoming integral to transparent international payments.
The Complexity Beneath the Surface
Risk and fraud management present escalating challenges. One critical difficulty is the velocity at which threats evolve. Many companies still combat fraud with static rules and legacy systems while fraudsters continuously adapt tactics. Data fragmentation compounds the challenge. Risk teams working with incomplete data inevitably react slowly or make decisions without full context.
Organizations struggle to balance security with user experience. The challenge lies in designing intelligent controls that block fraudulent activity without impeding legitimate users. Regulatory complexity adds significant weight as organizations must navigate PSD2, PCI DSS, AML regulations, data privacy laws, and card scheme mandates while these frameworks continuously evolve.
The real complexity lies in constructing an ecosystem where security, compliance, technology, and customer experience function in harmony. This requires cross functional collaboration across product, engineering, operations, compliance, and data teams.
Geography Shapes Strategy
Working across Europe and the Middle East has crystallized Roger’s understanding of how regional differences shape PayTech trajectories. European consumers prioritize stability, transparency, and regulation-driven security. Adoption of new payment methods typically grows steadily within structured regulatory frameworks.
The Middle East presents dramatically different dynamics. Younger demographics, high smartphone penetration, and strong appetite for convenience fuel rapid adoption of contactless payments, mobile wallets, and app-based financial services. Consumers frequently bypass traditional banking entirely.
These differences fundamentally shape Roger’s strategic approaches. In Europe, he plans around compliance and interoperability. In the Middle East, he designs for speed, scalability, and mobile-centric adoption.
Misconceptions That Hinder Progress
Roger notes that widespread misunderstandings are impeding the adoption of PayTech. The most detrimental approach views adoption mainly as a technological improvement, but the truth is that it affects operations, customer experience, risk management, compliance, and business strategy. Another error is to believe that “new” equates to “better” without considering strategic fit.
Many organizations assume plug-and-play deployment when payments actually interconnect deeply with legacy systems, merchant processes, risk engines, and regulatory requirements. Organizations frequently overlook operational and risk implications. New payment methods inevitably introduce new fraud patterns, dispute types, and compliance obligations.
The Next Wave of Innovation
Roger believes several major innovations will define the next decade. At the forefront is AI-driven intelligence extending into dynamic risk scoring, adaptive authentication, operational optimization, and personalized customer experiences. What will truly unlock this potential is collaboration. Ecosystem players working together, exchanging anonymized patterns securely through technologies like permissioned blockchains, will prove essential.
The second significant force is the ongoing growth of account-to-account, real-time payments. Peer-to-peer transfers and Pay-by-Bank solutions will advance quickly as immediate payment rails develop and interconnect. With fingerprint-capable cards and palm-based identification spreading into new form factors, biometric payments will increase dramatically.
The future will be defined by the convergence of AI, real time infrastructure, and secure collaboration, creating payment experiences that are smarter, safer, and more seamless.
Where Disruption Awaits
Cross-border payments and settlement remain most ripe for disruption. While domestic payments have evolved rapidly, cross-border experiences remain far from seamless. However, momentum is building. PIX in Brazil is expanding internationally. WERO in Europe aims to simplify cross-border payments within the EU. These initiatives signal a shift toward global, real-time interoperability.
Merchant acquiring for small and medium enterprises also awaits substantial disruption. Many acquirers still rely on manual onboarding, slow checks, and rigid pricing. SMEs expect digital-first onboarding, automated underwriting, and transparent fees.
Balancing Three Pillars
Roger believes leaders need to approach compliance, innovation, security and product development with a mindset of integration rather than trade-offs. The starting point is embedding compliance and security early. When risk, compliance, security and product teams join conversations from day one, innovation moves faster.
Clear cross-functional ownership is essential. Product, engineering, legal, risk, operations, and security teams need shared goals and strong communication. Leaders also need risk-based approaches rather than one-size-fits-all models, allowing businesses to innovate without compromising trust.
Contributing Constructively to Industry Conversations
Roger’s presence in industry discourse extends beyond technical expertise into thoughtful engagement with the payments community. His approach to sharing insights reflects a deliberate philosophy: the goal is never to create noise, but to add value. In an industry as complex and fast moving as payments, he focuses on simplifying topics, challenging assumptions, and sparking meaningful discussion rather than debate for its own sake.
What grounds Roger’s commentary is real-world experience spanning acquiring, banking, eCommerce, processing, risk, and product management. When he shares a perspective, it draws from hands-on work, market research, and the practical challenges businesses actually face rather than theory alone. This foundation allows him to speak with authority while maintaining humility about the industry’s evolving nature.
Roger takes the responsibility of addressing misinformation very seriously, particularly on platforms like LinkedIn where the payments community increasingly gathers to learn. As AI-generated content proliferates, often oversimplified or factually incorrect, he recognizes that many professionals rely on these platforms for education. When something misleading surfaces, he steps in to provide clearer, more accurate explanations, viewing this as a form of professional service rather than mere correction.
Education remains central to why Roger engages publicly. He believes complex topics can be explained in ways that are simultaneously accessible and professional, a principle that drove him to publish Mastering Digital Payments.
The book represents his commitment to contributing structured, reliable knowledge to an industry that evolves rapidly and desperately needs trustworthy resources.
Roger doesn’t aim to be the loudest voice in payments. He aims to be a useful one. In an ecosystem where visibility often masquerades as expertise, his contribution lies in consistency, accuracy, and the genuine desire to elevate collective understanding. Through measured commentary, educational initiatives, and willingness to challenge both misinformation and lazy assumptions, he shapes industry conversations toward substance over spectacle.
Essential Capabilities for the Next Generation
For new professionals, Roger identifies several non-negotiable competencies that span both character and skillset. On the character side, curiosity stands paramount. In an industry where innovation arrives in waves rather than trickles, passive learning guarantees obsolescence. Roger emphasizes that payments move too fast for anyone lacking natural inquisitiveness.
Equally foundational is understanding how the ecosystem actually functions. While no one needs mastery across every domain, grasping the fundamentals of issuing, acquiring, risk management, settlement, and regulation proves essential. Payments operate as an interconnected web, and professionals viewing only their narrow slice limit their trajectory.
Adaptability emerges as another critical mindset. Products that dominate today’s landscape barely existed or remained niche offerings just years ago. The terrain shifts constantly, making comfort with change not optional but mandatory. Roger also highlights analytical thinking as indispensable, given that payments generate torrents of data. The ability to interpret trends, detect anomalies, and decode user behaviour provides a genuine competitive advantage.
Patience matters profoundly in this complex ecosystem. No one masters payments in days or even months. The learning curve stretches long, and those who embrace this reality rather than resist it build stronger foundations. Alongside patience, openness to continuous learning defines success. New regulations surface. Technologies emerge. Customer expectations evolve. Staying current isn’t peripheral to the role; it constitutes the role itself.
Finally, collaboration proves non-negotiable. Payments exists at the crossroads where banks, fintechs, merchants, schemes, and regulators converge. Success depends on working effectively with diverse stakeholders and aligning them toward shared objectives.
When it comes to technical competencies, Roger recognizes that requirements vary dramatically by role. The payments ecosystem is vast, and each function demands distinct combinations of technical, business, and analytical capabilities. Professionals working on processing or core payments infrastructure typically require strong programming skills in languages like C/C++ or Java, coupled with a deep understanding of transaction flows, messaging standards, and system performance optimization.
POS and terminal developers navigate different terrain entirely, needing experience with Android and iOS development alongside a sophisticated grasp of mobile and device-level security models. Quality assurance specialists must cultivate extreme attention to detail paired with solid business acumen. Testing in payments transcends functional validation; it demands understanding transaction logic, edge cases, exception handling, and how failures cascade through downstream systems.
Compliance analysts need deep regulatory knowledge, familiarity with card-scheme rules, and a clear comprehension of how network processes operate in practice. Roles focused on chargebacks and dispute management require a strong command of payment flows, business logic, and scheme-specific processes, along with hands-on experience using dispute tools and platforms where accuracy and timing directly protect revenue and manage risk.
Sales and business development professionals face the challenge of translating complex payment concepts into clear business value. Success in these roles demands strong communication abilities, commercial awareness, understanding of pricing models and interchange mechanics, and the capacity to align customer needs with technical capabilities.
Product managers occupy perhaps the most multifaceted position, sitting at the intersection of business, technology, and customer experience. They need a holistic understanding of the payments ecosystem, sophisticated stakeholder management skills, data-driven decision making abilities, and the discipline to balance innovation against compliance and delivery constraints. Clear prioritization and the ability to define and execute product vision separate exceptional product managers from adequate ones.
Business analysts play a critical bridging role, translating between business objectives and technical constraints. They must transform requirements into precise documentation while collaborating closely with engineering, risk, and operations teams. Strong analytical thinking, process modelling skills, and meticulous attention to detail define success in this function.
While specific skills differ dramatically across roles, a common thread weaves through all of them: the imperative of continuous learning. Payments is intricate, and mastery unfolds over years rather than months. Those who remain curious, patient, and willing to evolve alongside the ecosystem are the ones who construct lasting, meaningful careers.
The Power of Shared Learning
Collaboration and community learning will be essential as PayTech globalizes. Innovation happens unevenly across regions, and the industry moves forward swiftly when ideas cross borders. Buy Now Pay Later provides a strong example, taking off in Europe and Australia before scaling globally, with each region adapting the model through shared learning.
Peer-to-peer payments face a challenge: models are evolving in silos. Latin America has PIX and MercadoPago. North America has Zelle and RTP. Europe has a mix of local instant rails and private wallets. Asia has UPI, PayNow and PromptPay. Without collaboration, the industry risks fragmentation where networks cannot interoperate.
The Road Ahead
Roger’s focus remains on making a meaningful impact through Cedarium, his independent consultancy, working with banks, fintechs, processors, and merchants to simplify processes and modernize infrastructures.
A major project energizes him: his second book is expected to be released in the second half of 2026. Mastering Digital Payments focused on fundamentals. This next work will deliver clear illustrations of various payment flows. Education represents another passion as he collaborates with academic institutions to design payment-focused courses.
In Fall 2026, Roger begins an EMBA program, an opportunity to broaden his strategic perspective and bring knowledge back into PayTech.
Through Cedarium, his writing, his educational collaborations, and his continued presence in industry conversations, Roger shapes not just payment systems but the collective understanding of how those systems work and where they’re heading. In an industry moving at digital speed, his contribution lies in creating clarity, fostering collaboration, and ensuring the next generation has better maps to navigate the complex terrain ahead. The invisible infrastructure of global commerce continues evolving, and Roger remains committed to building not just the systems themselves but the knowledge that makes those systems comprehensible, accessible, and ultimately more human.