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Open to full-time opportunities

John Simpson
Fintech × AI

Senior Product Manager with 20+ years in enterprise payments, embedded finance, and AI. I turn technical complexity into products that ship and revenue that scales.

Looking for: Product leadership at a growth-stage fintech or AI company where payments expertise and hands-on technical fluency drive the roadmap.

Trusted by leaders across payments.
Under John's leadership his product grew from a $5M offering to over $40M in recurring revenue in a three year period. He is a team leader, a mentor, and great communicator. He is ready to assume a role of greater challenge and leadership.
W.H.
Director, Verifone Inc.
John has a unique skill set of being highly technical but also business and solution focused. I've seen John grow professionally and personally over the past decade and strongly recommend him.
J.M.
CEO North America, Verifone
He brings a sense of urgency to every project, leads intuitively, and keeps client needs front and center. He's the kind of teammate who makes everyone around him better.
J.H.
Solution Engineer, Chargent
John can be trusted to drive cross-functional teams towards their goals while effectively addressing the needs of customers large and small.
C.A.
VP, Product Management, Verifone
John Simpson is an expert in the financial payments industry. His attention to detail is one of his greatest assets. He has a holistic view of a solution, understanding it is not a black box but multiple components that make a solution successful.
B.M.
Program Manager, Verifone
John's ability to consume disparate information and mold it into an executable roadmap deliverable greatly contributed to the success of my division.
W.H.
Director, Verifone Inc.
The numbers behind the work.
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ARR Growth
Scaled EMV payment solution from $5M to $40M ARR across Fortune 500 retailers, QSRs, and ISVs.
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Revenue Ownership
Managed 4 payment products simultaneously generating 60% of overall company revenue.
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Faster Onboarding
Accelerated underwriting and implementation timelines by 50% through PayFac and ERP automation.
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Merchants Launched
Onboarded within 6 months of launching a next-gen ERP embedded payments solution.
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Revenue Increase
EMV device portfolio refresh drove 30% revenue boost and 70% support case reduction.
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Pipeline Growth
AI-assisted lead monitoring tool for a consulting client grew sales pipeline by 40%.
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Influenced Revenue
150+ client demos and POCs contributed to $12M+ in team revenue with 15% win rate increase.
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Go-Live Acceleration
Process enhancements and role clarity enabled faster go-lives for a fast-growing fintech.
About
Payments expertise.
AI fluency. One product leader.

I've spent 20+ years in payments and fintech, building and scaling products where complex technology has to deliver real business outcomes. At Versapay, I owned four payment products that represented 60% of company revenue and served over 2,200 clients. Before that, I helped grow a semi-integrated EMV solution from $5M to $40M in ARR at Verifone during the U.S. liability shift.

Today I'm combining that deep payments expertise with hands-on AI skills to help growth-stage companies ship faster, sell smarter, and operationalize what's next. I made a deliberate investment in AI because I saw firsthand how it was reshaping the products I had spent my career building. That combination of deep fintech domain knowledge and hands-on AI capability is what I bring to every engagement.

Current Status

💼
Open to New Opportunities
Full-time remote
🎯
Target Roles
Product Manager, Senior Product Manager, Principal Product Manager, Director of Product Management
🌎
Domains
Fintech, Payments, AI, Embedded Finance
📍
Location
Savannah, GA (remote)
How I've driven outcomes.
Versapay Senior Product Manager
Launched ERP embedded payments, cutting onboarding time in half
Problem
New ERP-embedded merchants faced lengthy underwriting and integration cycles, delaying time-to-revenue and frustrating partners.
Action
Designed a streamlined PayFac onboarding flow, worked with engineering to automate underwriting decisions, and built partner-facing integration guides.
Result
Cut onboarding from 6 weeks to 3. Added 100+ new merchants in 6 months. Product became the company's fastest-growing revenue line.
Verifone Product Manager
Scaled EMV solution from $5M to $40M ARR during U.S. liability shift
Problem
The October 2015 EMV liability shift created massive certification demand. Verifone needed to scale its semi-integrated solution across hundreds of merchants and processors simultaneously.
Action
Served as the primary liaison with every major U.S. processor and card brand. Streamlined certification pipelines and prioritized high-value verticals (Fortune 500 retail, QSR, ISVs).
Result
Grew ARR 8x in three years. Enabled adoption across 2,500+ retail locations. Product became Verifone's top growth driver in North America.
Consulting Merchant Services Consultant
Built AI-powered lead monitoring tool that grew sales pipeline by 40%
Problem
A specialty services client had no systematic way to identify high-intent prospects. Their sales team relied on cold outreach and word-of-mouth referrals.
Action
Designed and deployed an AI-assisted social media monitoring tool that surfaced real-time buying signals and routed qualified leads to sales via Discord alerts.
Result
40% pipeline growth within the first quarter. Client shifted budget from cold outreach to inbound follow-up, reducing cost per lead significantly.
Skills & Tools

Product & Leadership

Go-To-Market Strategy Product Discovery Multi-Year Roadmaps C-Suite Communication Stakeholder Alignment Agile / Scrum Competitive Analysis Release Management

AI/ML & Platforms

Prompt Engineering Claude Code CLI GitHub Copilot Ollama Docker Jira Figma DataDog

Fintech & Payments

Card Processing Rails EMV Terminals PayFac / Embedded Payments ACH / RTP / FedNow Interchange Optimization Fraud / 3DS / SCA PCI-DSS KYC / KYB / AML
Experience
20+ years of shipping products
that move money.
Merchant Services Consultant
Entrepreneur
  • Grew sales pipeline by 40% for a specialty services client by designing and deploying an AI-assisted social media monitoring tool that identified high-intent prospects in real time.
  • Built tooling with AI assistance to automate payroll register file parsing into standardized Excel format, reducing an hours-long process into a single click.
  • Reduced go-live timelines by 6 weeks for a fast-growing fintech by implementing unified SOPs for sales-to-implementation handoffs.
  • Providing AI consulting and fintech advisory services to clients exploring how AI adoption can introduce new cost efficiencies.
Senior Product Manager
Versapay
  • Owned 4 payment products simultaneously generating 60% of company revenue across 2,200 B2B, SaaS, and B2C clients.
  • Launched next-gen ERP embedded payments solution, cutting underwriting and onboarding time by 50% and adding 100+ new customers in 6 months.
  • Drove 30% increase in EMV revenue and 70% reduction in support cases through a company-wide device portfolio refresh.
  • Led a cross-functional product squad (engineering, QA, UX/UI) without direct reporting lines, driving Agile ceremonies and on-time delivery.
Product Manager
Verifone, Inc.
  • Scaled EMV solutions from $5M to $40M ARR during the U.S. liability transition.
  • Liaison for all primary U.S. payment processors and card brands for timely EMV certification.
  • Gathered business requirements for Fortune 500 retail and QSR verticals.
  • Collaborated with Marketing and GTM teams on product launches, shaping value propositions and sales enablement content.
Sales Engineer
Verifone, Inc.
  • Led pre-sales technical consulting for enterprise payment solutions delivering 150+ demonstrations.
  • Contributed to $12M+ in team revenue with a 15% win rate increase.
  • Created sales enablement materials and deployment guides for North American implementations.
  • Promoted a new payment solution to 100+ early adopters. Recipient of Verifone President's Club Award.
Developer Support
Verifone, Inc.
  • Managed rollout of 400+ payment integrations for channel partners.
  • Supported 100+ channel partner API integrations, reducing integration time by 25%.
  • Established 30+ SOPs utilized by international support teams.
  • Built comprehensive payment processing reference library for global implementation teams.
Where fintech expertise
meets product thinking.
Applications demonstrating domain depth in payments, fundraising, and commerce alongside practical AI-assisted development workflows.
InterchangeIQ
Six interactive tools for interchange fee optimization: transaction validation, downgrade simulation, routing comparison, CEDP readiness checking, rate lookup, and agentic commerce risk analysis.
Interchange Visa / Mastercard Optimization Live Demo
Live Demo →
Agent Trust Dashboard
Real-time command center for monitoring, governing, and intervening in autonomous AI purchasing agents. Features live activity feeds, decision audit trails, anomaly detection, and per-agent kill switches.
AI Agents Governance Live Demo
Live Demo →
Nuvei US Payment Rails Explorer
Interactive product demo exploring US bank-based payment rails (ACH, RTP, FedNow) across Gaming, Prediction Market, and Crypto verticals with animated transaction lifecycle simulation.
ACH / RTP / FedNow Payments Live Demo
Live Demo →
Stripe Commerce Explorer
Three interactive simulations showcasing how Stripe's checkout, identity, and fraud products work together to power modern commerce.
Stripe Payments Live Demo
Live Demo →
FundraiseAI
Portfolio-level AI optimization with Monte Carlo scenario simulation for capital campaign planning.
AI / LLM Monte Carlo Live Demo
Live Demo →
Transaction Data Analyzer
Python CLI tool for analyzing payment transaction data including auth rates, declines, chargebacks, and volume metrics.
Python CLI Analytics
View Code →
AI-Powered PRD Generator
CLI tool that generates structured PRDs from feature ideas using Anthropic Claude or local Ollama models.
Claude API Ollama CLI
View Code →
Automated Report Engine
Configuration-driven Python tool for generating and distributing automated HTML/PDF reports from multiple data sources.
Python Automation PDF
View Code →
Social Media Lead Monitor
AI-assisted lead generation tool that monitors social media for high-intent sales signals and sends real-time Discord alerts.
AI Lead Gen Discord
View Code →
Fintech Buzzword Bingo
A tongue-in-cheek Python tool that analyzes earnings calls and corporate communications for buzzword density.
Python NLP Satire
View Code →
Philosophy
My Approach

My favorite kind of problem is the one nobody else wants to own. The messy, cross-functional, "who does this even belong to?" kind. I've found that the work nobody is touching is usually the work that matters most, and stepping into it is where I've made the biggest impact in every role I've held.

I was hired as the first Product Manager at a 39-person payments startup in 2019, owning four products with no formal process in place. One month later, a merger doubled the company overnight, and I helped unify two separate product organizations into a cohesive structure. I continued owning the four original products as they grew to 60% of combined company revenue. By my departure, the company had crossed 400 employees with multiple PM teams running on the framework we built.

More recently, I made a deliberate investment in AI. I saw firsthand how it was reshaping the products I had spent my career building. I started learning prompt engineering, deploying local language models, and building AI-powered prototypes. One of those prototypes, a social media monitoring tool, grew a client's sales pipeline by 40%.

The skill I've leaned on most throughout my career isn't strategy or technical depth. It's translation. Executives speak in outcomes, engineers speak in constraints, and customers speak in problems. The Product Managers who connect all three are the ones who ship work that actually matters.

Credentials
Education & Certifications

Education

BBA, Computer Information Systems
Savannah State University

Certifications

AI For Everyone
DeepLearning.AI, 2025
Introduction to Generative AI
Google Cloud, 2025
CompTIA A+ and Network+
Connect
Let's build something together.

Whether you have a role in mind, a product challenge, or just want to connect, I'd love to hear from you.

Let's Talk