Sam French
Director of Product at Token.io
Building cutting-edge Account-to-Account payment solutions.
Product Leader
A mission driven product leader who thrives scaling businesses & high performing teams. I am passionate about growing and developing high performing teams in fast paced engineering environments; taking innovative digital products and solutions from ideation to market. I have a track record developing products used by millions of customers, forming synergistic alliances with both Tier 1 Financial institutions and big Tech companies; whilst maintaining a commercial focus on P&L and business development.
About
Mission‑driven product leader focused on Open Banking–powered payments and data products, from idea to launch to iterative growth. Currently Director of Product at Token.io, leading A2A payments and a connectivity network across EMEA; previously at Barclays, shipped in‑app account aggregation and permissions management. Passionate about market‑leading UX and building teams that deliver measurable outcomes. Manchester‑based; First‑Class BSc (Hons), Manchester Metropolitan University.
Product Leadership
Payment Technology
Industry Expertise
My Professional Journey
Token.io
Director of Product
- Led product strategy across Account-to-Account payments and the Global Connectivity Network
- Launched Pay by Link and hosted PIS checkout experiences with iterative A/B testing
- Delivered Sweeping VRP (mandates, consent flows, control parameters) and progressed cVRP with banks
- Expanded coverage across 20+ EMEA markets with a focus on reliability and performance
Evelyn Partners (BestInvest)
Product Lead, Shared Services
- Built and led a new multi‑disciplinary product team (PO + 5 engineers)
- Delivered a new corporate intranet for 2,000 colleagues
- Migrated from FileMaker to a Snowflake data platform and API‑led services
- Improved performance and reliability (p95 latency 2.3 s to 240 ms; uptime 99.9%)
Auden
Product Delivery Lead, Customer Acquisition
- Led the Customer Acquisition value stream; managed a 16‑person cross‑functional team
- Directed a rebrand across website and mobile app to improve customer experience
- Migrated payment gateway reducing processing costs by 20%
- Integrated Open Banking with Experian to improve loan acceptance by 12%
Barclays
Project Manager, Open Banking & Strategic Partnerships
- Delivered CMA Open Banking PIS/AIS compliance (v1–v3)
- Shipped in‑app account aggregation and Open Banking permissions management in the Barclays app
- Launched the first Premium API service with MoneySuperMarket (personalised loan quotes)
- Partnered across engineering, design and compliance to ship B2C features at scale
Product Leadership Highlights
Variable Recurring Payments
Launched Token.io's VRP proposition partnering with Tier 1 Financial Institutions
Payment Analytics Dashboard
Data-driven platform for tracking A2A payment performance metrics
Open Banking Connectivity Network
Expanded Token.io's bank connectivity across 7+ European countries
My Skills & Expertise
Expertise Levels
With over 8 years in payment technology and product leadership, I bring a unique blend of technical knowledge and strategic vision to drive successful digital products.
How Would We Work Together?
Discover Your Product Personality
Curious about how we might collaborate? Take this quick quiz to discover your product personality and see how we could work together on payment and fintech initiatives.
Get In Touch
Prefer to connect directly? Reach out via sam@samfrench.io