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ImageNPay's CEO Michael Donald has been in the business for years: as the former Chief Commercial Officer at MBNA and Head of Emerging Payment at Bank of America and Europe, this experience has led to his knowledge and expertise being driven into ImageNPay.
With over 30 years of experience, Michael has worked with a host of global organisations such as IKEA, American Express, and Mastercard and also served as a board member with VISA UK.
With a wealth of experience behind him, Michael has taken his knowledge and drive to build ImageNPay from a small start-up to the world's most exciting payment app. Here are three news stories that Michael Donald has been featured in over the last few months:
The Guardian
Michael has been featured in one of the biggest national news outlets in The Guardian on multiple occasions.
Before Christmas, Michael campaigned calling for new legal caps on 'exorbitant' credit card interest rates which are at their highest for more than two decades.
Michael said, “If the Bank of England base rate is the lowest ever, how can you have a credit product which drives people further into indebtedness with the rates continually going up?".
Showing his knowledge, further quotes and information can be found via this link.
He spoke about his knowledge in ensuring that there must be more protection around ensuring that people don’t get themselves into debt. Michael said: “There needs to be tighter controls to block certain categories which are a fast track for the less fortunate in society to spiral into debt.”
Read the article in full below:
You and Yours
Michael featured on BBC Radio 4’s show You and Yours speaking about credit cards, interest rates and what can be done to combat the ongoing situation.
Michael generally spoke about how people with lower incomes will struggle with the repayment structure if things continue the way they are.
“Minimum payments are too easy for consumers to fall into the trap of paying for something now and paying off in the long term.
If we look at statistics generally, over a 5th of those who borrow credit cards are in persistent debt and are only ever paying off the minimum amount quoted at the beginning. So even with 56 billion outstanding, we have 30 million consumers and 6 million are only making a minimum payment each month. I would say in an environment where interest is historically low that the APRs charged by banks should have a complete review.”
Michael added we must look at the interest rates being charged and work from early on about managing payments:
“I think we need to look at a pivot to see which end of the see-saw is managing which.
Now if we have people who are paying 39% balancing out those that are paying 18% or those in full, we need to look at recalibrating that in a way in which we have a more balanced APR on average.
That means that everyone pays more fairly because otherwise people on lower incomes who really cannot afford to pay back those higher rates of interest, will be subsidising the higher income.”
Listen to the full interview on You and Yours here:
Alex’s Story
In a remarkable story, Michael’s son Alex came up with innovative ideas to improve ImageNPay. It was Alex, who was 8 at the time, who overheard his father on the call before suggesting a new name and how it could work along with computer games and charities.
Alex had sketched a design on his iPad with a new name and that began the long line of ever-present ideas.
Michael said “Alex came up with the name ImageNPay because he said you should be able to use your imagination when choosing designs for your virtual charge card, Image N Pay like Rock N Roll.
He has since made lots of contributions to the company roadmap - some of which are not yet technically possible - so our patents have him noted as a co-inventor”