Rafael Calvo

Business Development Director  ·  Fintech & Payments  ·  Stablecoins  ·  AI Transformation  ·  New York, NY

AI Transformation Agentic Systems 25+ Years Experience Stablecoins & Crypto Digital Wallets · BNPL Strategic Partnerships EU & US Markets
25+
Years Experience
13
Years at Visa
5
Multi-Million $ Deals
7
AI Systems in Prod
Professional Summary
Payments and partnerships executive with 25+ years in technology and 13 years at Visa, selling payments infrastructure to banks, fintechs, wallets and processors across the U.S. and Europe. Track record closing multi-million dollar, multi-year strategic deals — from winning back BBVA's portfolio from Mastercard to leading Visa's partnership with Block (Square, Cash App, Afterpay) today. Founder with a successful exit.

A hands-on builder who uses AI to sell better: leading the AI transformation of Visa NA Fintech's commercial team and shipping his own sales stack — client microsites, a CRM tracking client information, performance, revenue and deals, and account intelligence for deal prep. A playbook built at corporate scale that transfers directly to a team building its sales function from zero.

Has been tracking the convergence of cards, stablecoins and AI agents since before the 2026 stablecoin wave — see “Cards, Stablecoins, Bitcoin and AI Agents” (January 2026).
Career Timeline — click any role to expand
Partnerships & BD Director ▾
Visa — Strategic Enablers & Fintechs
Oct 2023 – Present 📍 New York, NY
  • Lead strategic partnerships with Block Inc. (Square, Cash App, Afterpay), driving growth across BNPL, embedded finance, and digital wallets in the U.S. market.
  • AI Transformation: Leading the AI transformation of Visa NA Fintech's commercial team — operating model, data, success metrics and roadmap — and building the production systems hands-on.
  • AI-Native Sales: Built a personal sales stack: client microsites, a CRM tracking client information, performance, revenue and deals, and relationship intelligence for deal preparation.
Digital Partnerships Sr. Manager ▾
Visa — Digital Partners EU
Jan 2022 – Oct 2023 📍 Madrid & London
  • Managed strategic relationships with Google and Samsung across multiple EU markets — wallet expansion, device binding, and digital authentication.
  • Contributed to wallet launches in 6 new countries; closed deals with 3 major EU banks (Barclays, Santander, Caixa).
Key Account Senior Sales Manager ▾
Visa — Spanish Issuers
Oct 2015 – Dec 2021 📍 Madrid, Spain
  • BBVA: Closed multi-million dollar 7Y portfolio recovery from Mastercard; Visa share 73%→>90% (+1.4M cards). Launched Visa Aqua — Spain's leading digital-first card.
  • Executed agreements with Ibercaja (10Y) & Abanca (7Y), full portfolio migration 45%→>95% and 55%→>95%.
  • Closed Spain's first Visa processing deal with UniversalPay.
Product Sales Delivery Manager ▾
Visa — Ecommerce Products (V.me / Click to Pay)
Sep 2013 – Oct 2015 📍 Madrid & London
  • Led sales delivery of V.me by Visa (predecessor of Click to Pay) in Spain — 7 issuer wallet contracts.
  • Signed the #1 V.me merchant in Europe.
IT Director ▾
ANECA — Public Sector Agency
Mar 2010 – Aug 2013 📍 Madrid, Spain
  • Led IT strategy, infrastructure modernization, and digital transformation for a national public sector agency.
  • Managed Dev, Systems, and Helpdesk teams; oversaw technology vendor relationships.
Sr. Technical Support Engineer ▾
Symantec Corporation
Dec 2006 – Mar 2010 📍 Madrid, Spain
  • Senior technical support for the Veritas/Backup Exec product suite — large enterprise clients across the EU.
Windows Systems Engineer
HP — Carrefour Spain  ·  Airis Computers
2002 – 2006
Founder & CPO 🚀 ▾
PIC — Plataforma Interactiva de Comunicación
2000 – 2002 📍 Spain · Successful Exit
  • Co-founded one of Spain's first interactive media startups — pioneered SMS-based audience participation for live TV across major Spanish broadcasters. A world-first in 1997.
  • Built and commercialised the product; achieved successful exit through acquisition.
Product Manager ▾
TYVE Technologies
1997 – 2002 📍 Spain
  • Led product management for interactive television and digital media solutions — developed early SMS-based interactivity products that became the foundation for PIC.
Education, Certifications & Skills

Education & Certifications

Computer Science
Cibernos
2002 – 2005
Certifications
ITIL V3 Service Manager · Sep 2012
MCITP: Enterprise Administrator · 2008
MCSA: Windows Server 2003 · 2006
Languages:  Spanish — Native  ·  English — Full Professional Proficiency

Key Skills

AI & Technology
AI Transformation Agentic Systems Prompt Engineering LLM Inference RAG MCP GenAI Leadership Local AI Infra
Business & Strategy
Fintech Strategy Crypto & Stablecoins Digital Wallets BNPL Strategic Partnerships Business Development Strategic Initiatives Embedded Finance EU & US Markets
AI-Native Sales — built inside and outside corporate environments
🔶
Sales Operating Model
Leading AI Transformation at Visa NA Fintech
  • Leading the AI transformation of the NA Fintech commercial team — operating model, data architecture, success metrics, roadmap
  • Builder-led: ships the production systems himself, sets proof points and reports results to leadership
  • Transferable playbook — AI built into the sales function from day one, not bolted on later; ideal for a team without legacy infrastructure
🟢
Sales Stack
Already Built & In Use
  • Personal CRM — client information, performance, revenue and deal tracking across the portfolio
  • Client microsites — tailored per-client sites for proposals, joint plans and updates
  • Account intelligence — client analysis & relationship mapping for deal preparation
  • Prospecting engine — LLM prospect classification + enrichment (Hunter.io / Google Places) → CRM, built end to end
  • Market intelligence — agentic monitoring of fintech media, X/Twitter, press & video → configurable daily digests
🔵
Builder
Production AI Systems
  • GTD + Copilot Cowork — AI productivity platform (SQLite / Node.js / Claude Code) capturing project memory & rolling summaries
  • TripTyk CRM Intelligence Agent — end-to-end lead generation pipeline (Laravel / PostgreSQL / Redis) with LLM-based prospect classification (Gemma / LM Studio), external enrichment (Hunter.io / Google Places / AgentMail), and structured ingestion into Relaticle CRM for a design & construction business
  • Portfolio Intelligence Tracker — full-stack investment platform (FastAPI / IBKR API / Claude) with AI trade setup generation and multi-turn agent analysis
  • YouTube Summaries Pipeline — local AI ingestion (faster-whisper / Gemma / LM Studio) transcribing & publishing bilingual content to WordPress
  • Openclaw / Hermes Agent — personal AI OS with persistent memory, email/WhatsApp, cron scheduling, and orchestration across local & cloud services
  • Self-hosted LLM infrastructure — NVIDIA GPU + WSL2 + Docker + Tailscale running Google Gemma, Qwen, Mistral, and Deepseek for cost control
⚙️
Foundational
Technical Fluency
  • Transformer architecture · quantization (GGUF/GPTQ) · RAG · MCP · agentic systems · tool use · prompt engineering · local inference
  • Daily tools: Claude Code · GitHub Copilot · Codex · Perplexity
  • Local inference (cost optimization): LM Studio · Ollama · Models: Gemma · Qwen · Mistral · Claude API
Claude Code GitHub Copilot Codex Perplexity LM Studio Ollama MCP RAG Prompt Engineering FastAPI Docker SQLite AgentMail
CliftonStrengths® Top 5 Gallup · Assessed May 2025
#1
Ideation
Strategic Thinking
Fascinated by ideas — finds connections between disparate phenomena and generates original solutions.
#2
Maximizer
Influencing
Focuses on strengths to stimulate excellence — transforms something strong into something superb.
#3
Strategic
Strategic Thinking
Creates alternative ways to proceed — quickly spots patterns and crafts the best path forward.
#4
Positivity
Relationship Building
Brings contagious enthusiasm — energizes teams and sees the best in people and every situation.
#5
Developer
Relationship Building
Recognises and cultivates the potential in others — draws satisfaction from coaching and growth.