From building distribution networks in India's heartland to shaping the future of digital payments, Vishal Maru's 25-year journey reflects continuous reinvention, ecosystem building, and growth at scale. Spanning consumer goods, banking, merchant acquiring, card issuance, payment processing, and fintech, he has built businesses across every layer of India's payments landscape.
VISHAL MARU has been appointed Senior Vice President, Product Strategy & Growth at Phi Commerce, bringing deep expertise across payments, fintech, distribution, and financial infrastructure.
He began his career at Unilever and Shell, building distribution networks and strategic alliances. At ICICI Bank, he scaled card issuance and merchant acquiring businesses, helping build payment acceptance infrastructure across emerging markets.
He later held leadership roles at Global Payments Inc., driving merchant services growth and strategic partnerships across Western India.
The defining chapter came during nearly 15 years at Worldline, where he led merchant services, digital payments, loyalty, and financial institutions businesses. He delivered 3X growth in card issuance revenue, launched acquiring and merchant platforms, expanded embedded payments capabilities, and built partnerships with Visa, Mastercard, American Express, National Payments Corporation Of India (NPCI), and more than 70 ecosystem partners.
Most recently, as Global Head - Processing Business at FSS, he led global processing operations spanning issuance, acquiring, ATM managed services, and digital transformation.
Now at Phi Commerce, he will lead product strategy, growth, and ecosystem expansion, helping accelerate the next phase of innovation in digital payments.
At Boardroom CXO, we're seeing fintech and payments companies increasingly value leaders with end-to-end experience across distribution, acquiring, issuance, processing, and product growth. As the payments ecosystem evolves, full-stack commercial and operational expertise is becoming a key leadership differentiator.
We run an invite-only CXO community with weekly networking and peer learning sessions where fintech, payments, and product leaders discuss scaling payment platforms, embedded finance, ecosystem partnerships, and profitable growth. Interested? DM us.
For fintech leaders: what's harder today, building a scalable payments platform in a regulated environment, or creating merchant and banking partnerships that sustain long-term growth?
First published on the Boardroom CXO LinkedIn page on 22 June 2026. To correct or remove it, write to [email protected].
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