Board of Directors

Peter Matthews

Peter Matthews is Chairman of Smart Transactions Group and also is founder and CEO of Nucleus, the world’s first integrated brand+digital+intellectual property consultancy. Nucleus founded sQuid in 2005 as one of its entrepreneurial ‘practice what you preach’ ventures.

Peter has been at the cutting-edge of brand, digital and IP thinking for over 30 years, remaining a hands-on adviser to many global clients, identifying and realising value creation opportunities where innovation, branding and digital media impact on business models, customer acquisition and loyalty. While comfortable in many sectors, he specialises in financial services, luxury and travel. A passionate believer in the value of innovation and the need to protect intellectual property - particularly when applied to disruptive business models - Peter, together with Adam Smith, spotted the opportunity to establish a disruptive next-generation payments platform and founded sQuid in 2005.

His business experience is exceptionally wide, having led Nucleus since inception in 1979 through three decades of change, and includes: start-ups, M&A, trade sale, MBO, divestments, corporate restructuring and many private equity fundraisings.

Working closely with Duncan McNeil, Peter negotiated and guided the merger of sQuid and ACT to create Smart Transactions Group in April 2011.

Peter is married with seven children and lives in Barnes, South West London.

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Duncan McNeil

Duncan is a board member of Smart Transactions Group and co-founder and director of ACT.

He has worked in the IT industry since 1974 and has been providing consultancy and advisory services to senior management since 1983. Originally independent, he formed Applied Systems Engineering (now ASE Consulting) in 1987 and remains its Chief Executive.

He specialises in programme management and the design, inter-working and management of large systems architectures.

The ASE years have seen Duncan lead numerous major pieces of work, many of which have been for Central Government. Much of the work has involved project, technical and supplier management on the largest scale and teams of many hundreds. He has also been called upon to provide expert technical advice to litigators.

In addition to ASE, Duncan has founded several other companies, one of which was ACT. He was also an early round angel investor in sQuid.

In 2009/10 Duncan was nominated for (but did not win!) the Sir Frank Whittle medal which is awarded by the Royal Academy of Engineering in recognition of “outstanding and sustained achievement which has contributed to the well-being of the nation”.

Duncan splits his time between the UK and Scandinavia and has two grown-up daughters.

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Adam Smith

Adam Smith is a board director of Smart Transactions Group and co-founder and CEO of sQuid.

He, together with Peter Matthews, conceived sQuid during his time at Nucleus, and has subsequently led the business from incubation through to operational delivery of the UK's leading e-money contactless payment system.

Adam’s background is in telecoms - he was the Managing Director of the Telewest cable operator’s Business Telecommunications Division (prior to becoming part of VirginMedia) leading that business through turnaround and the exciting challenges of creating broadband and services delivery to the business marketplace. Prior to this role he was Telewest’s Strategy Director. His earlier commercial experience encompassed several industries, as well as strategy consultancy with LEK and Ernst and Young.

Adam’s experience of working within complex industries, building high service business models and creating new services has been instrumental in successfully developing sQuid as an alternative to traditional bank-centric payment systems. "If you think of smart transactions as the movement of data over telecoms networks, it’s a good start to building a disruptive business model in payments" he says. But above all, he thinks that two things are required – a bit of luck, and a great team of people to work with.

Adam is married with three children and lives in Surrey.
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Gary Watts

Gary Watts is a board director of Smart Transactions Group and co-founder and CEO of ACT.

Having worked in the computer industry since 1994, Gary is a well-respected e-commerce professional and industry expert in the field of smartcard transaction systems.

Gary has been ACT's guiding force since inception in 2002, underpinning ACTs corporate direction and strong financial growth. As a proven innovator and believer in empowerment management he has created a multi-disciplined management team to deliver ACT's growth strategy. His drive and passion for innovative use of IT, coupled with excellent business acumen, have helped shape ACT into the successful, innovative and energised company it is today.

Under Gary's leadership, ACT has delivered innovative IT programmes that include: the acclaimed London 'Zingo' taxi hailing programme; ESSO Ireland's Tiger Miles smart card loyalty scheme, the intelligent ITSO ticketing scheme for the Go Ahead group of companies and ITSO concessionary ticketing services for the majority of public sector bodies in the UK.

He instigated ACT’s successful move into the North American market with the deployment of the Las Vegas, New York, New Orleans and the Honolulu smart ticketing solutions and recently the penetration of the European market through ticketing projects including the Edinburgh Pass, the Dublin pass, Brugge, Oostende and Malta tourism card programmes.

Gary started his career with International Computers Limited (ICL) where he began to build his knowledge and experience working for various business divisions including IT development, finance, marketing and sales.

Gary is married with a six year old son, an eight year-old daughter and lives in Wiltshire.

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John Holland

John Holland is a board director of Smart Transactions Group and was a founder angel investor in sQuid during 2006, joining the board of that company in 2010.

He is a seasoned senior banker/broker, having spent all his 24 years in investment banking with the UBS/SBC/SG Warburg Group. He brings to Smart Transactions a wide range of finance, fundraising and deal structuring skills, as well as extensive experience of Asian and other Emerging Markets.

John is a proven builder of profitable businesses from the bottom up - both regional and functional. He has also managed large groups of more than 500 staff across many countries in both Asia and Europe. As part of his various roles at UBS, he planned and executed major technology-led change programmes across multi-time zones with significant positive results on both business performance and profitability. He has experience over more than two decades of working with Financial Regulators in Europe (the UK's FSA and the European Commission) and Asia (China, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore) on major regulatory change programmes.

John is married with two teenage sons and a four year-old daughter and lives in Surrey.

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