Kaushalya was the UK Head of Payments, Industry Relations & Partnerships at Square until recently, where she oversaw the corporate governance, regulatory matters and relationships with industry partners. Kaushalya often took part in industry panels and public fora as a key speaker representing Square and the merchants it supports.
Prior to that, Kaushalya held senior roles at HSBC across Venture Debt & Equity Investments, FinTech Partnerships, Corporate Development, Strategy & Planning and Group Audit. In her most recent role, she was the Global Head of FinTech Partnerships & Strategy for the Corporate & Institutional Digital group where she led the partnerships & corporate venturing for HSBC’s core businesses. Kaushalya also served as a Director in the HSBC Strategic Innovation Investments team where she led the investments into and sat on the Boards of several portfolio companies including Tradeshift. Within Corporate Development, Kaushalya led HSBC’s investment into Markit and subsequent IPO as well as investments into industry consortia such as Acadiasoft, OTCDeriv, LCH/LSE and LiquidityMatch. She also led HSBC’s foray into Distributed Ledger Technology including the investment in and partnership with R3 and HSBC’s participation in major industry initiatives such as Utility Settlement Coin (Finality).
Kaushalya also served on the World Trade Board, BAFT Innovation Council, Tech City – Fintech Delivery Panel, Fintech Circle Institute and Whitechapel Think Tank and has been consistently recognised as a leading woman in FinTech, Banking & Technology and quoted in many industry publications and thought leadership pieces.
Kaushalya is a Fellow of the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants. She grew up Botswana and holds an MBA from Australia prior to moving to the UK in 2006.