Summary
Strategic, innovative, entrepreneurial, high-energy, cross-cultural leader with a track record of success. 10 years of internet General Management, 8 years of international marketing and product management, 9 years of systems consulting in both large and small companies. Equally proficient with technology and business.
Vice President, Innovation & Strategic Partnerships, Asia Pacific
October 2014 - September 2016
Drive strategic partnerships with non-Financial Institutions in Asia. Build long-term relationships with key digital players in Asia and help US partners, such as Apple and Stripe, enter Asia.
Recruit and build the dynamic, new team catalyzing the culture change within Visa
Shape the creation of the innovation lab in Singapore
Publicly represent Visa in conferences and panels on innovation
Speeches, Conferences, Presentations, Articles
| Staying Ahead of the Curve in the Sharing Economy |
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| Digital Thailand 2016 |
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| CASS (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) Payments Policy Forum in Beijing in May 2016 |
 In good company... with Milton Friedman in background. |
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5th Annual Enterprise Innovation CXO Forum held at Westin Singapore on 13-14 April 2016 |
 Panel on Innovation in Silicon Valley - what can be learned for Singapore. |
| Singapore Management University (SMU) - Future of Payments |
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| Paying it Forward panel, at the Goldman Sachs Fintech Conference Asia Pacific 2015 in Hong Kong. |
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China Strategy @ INSEAD,
Singapore Campus October 2015 |
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Julius Baer Meeting April 11, 2015 |
 I presented on Digital Payments Innovation at The Capella. |
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Internet Financial Global Summit, Beijing
Jan 19, 2015
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Start of Visa’s Payment Reform – Interpret 2nd Internet Financial Global Summit jpm (China) - The 2nd Internet Financial Global Summit was held in Beijing on January 19. Visa was the sole US credit card company to attend the summit and drew wide attention. Alan Tien, Visa’s Vice President of Commerce & Network Payments, talked about the company’s measures to cope with challenges from online payment and mobile payment amid impacts of Internet finance. Visa attaches importance to technology reform. It used to only partner with traditional financial institutions in the past 50 years, but now it is reaching its hands out to non-financial institutions. During this visit to China, Alan Tien expects to seek strategic partners in the country. |
Senior Director for Global Cross-Border Trade, January 2013
APAC VP's announcement: "Alan Tien will be moving to Singapore for a new role. I am excited to confirm that Alan will be our Senior Director for Global Cross-Border Trade. This is a great role for Alan and the company – he has a strong and proven track record in understanding and growing the businesses of our cross-border merchants in the region, and can now lead and scale these insights to accelerate cross-border growth for all our merchants and consumers across the world. With CBT representing such a considerable portion of our business worldwide, Alan's leadership and commercial experience will undoubtedly have a significant impact. "
Speeches, Conferences, Presentations
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Chicago Booth Career Services
High Tech Panel, April 8, 2013 Executive mentoring, April 2014 |
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Panel: "Secret ingredients to winning businesses in Asia" April 27, 2013 |
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Panelist at Plug-in@Blk71 Fall 2013 |
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Judge for Design Incubation Centre Fall 2013 |
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China Strategy @ INSEAD,
Singapore Campus Fall 2013 April 4, 2014 October 4, 2014 |
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China General Manager, June 2008 - December 2012
Alan Tien, the GM of PayPal China, has overall responsibility for daily operation for PayPal China, including marketing and sales, and establishing the PayPal brand and community of users in China. Under his leadership for the last 4 years, PayPal China’s revenues have quintupled, with Greater China’s TPV (Transaction Processing Volume) in 2010 exceeding $4.4 billion USD. He has also led strategic partnerships with China Union Pay and the Chongqing government.
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Tedx Hong Kong December 2012 |
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China Daily – 10 Nov Economic Watch: 18th Party Congress Views and hopes from top executives |
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China Economic Review
Oct 17, 2012 |
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| SJ Mercury News Interview - 10/23/2011 |
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| Digital Business Times - My Band of Brothers - 11/20/2011 |
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China Daily article on ChongQing initiative - 4/6/2012
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Alan's first TV spot in China. On China Business Network CBN, for PayPal. |
| May 2012 - Beijing e-commerce conference |
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| Entrepreneur's Organization T12 event |
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| PayPal China 2012 Cross Border e-Commerce Day |
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China General Manager, April 2007 - April 2008
Established Geni's China Representative Office. Singapore Entrepreneurs' interview of me. Geni decides not to go international yet, after I am on the job for 9 months.
APAC Strategy Director, February - March 2006
I unofficially started my new role as Asia Pacific's strategy director, but before I could accept the formal offer and move to Singapore, I got the Geni.com offer.
China Country Product Manager, July 2005 - Jan 2006
After successfully launching PayPal China, Alan relocates to Shanghai and becomes the China Country Product Manager. A crazy year and a half goes by, where Alan is part of the Executive Staff of the China office. We do a ton of EBFs (Emergency Bug Fixes), EFRs (Emergency Feature Requests), and huge products that have little effect in the supremely difficult China internet environment. The competition is fierce, nimble and free. The regulatory environment is muddy. The financial instrument PayPal assumes - credit cards - are hardly used in this cash society. So in lieu of successful products, we do strategy. Believe it or not, it works. We focus on where we're strong - cross-border - and suddenly all of our numbers are in the positive and the team is energized. However, payments is the tail on the e-commerce dog. Once eBay announces a JV with TOM Online, PPCN's future is diminished. Time for me to move on...
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Group Product Manager, June 2004
Alan got promoted to Group Product Manager to lead the development of PayPal for China.
Senior Product Manager, February 2004
Alan got promoted to Senior PM after a long delay because the merger with eBay pushed back all promotions. The Merchant Services team expanded to cover not just small businesses but also large. While managing the features to satisfy enterprise customers, he launched PayPal Web Services (APIs). Check it out at https://developer.paypal.com.
| Alan launches PayPal APIs |
Product Manager, August 2002 - February 2004
Alan is a Product Manager on Paypal's Merchant Services team. He is responsible for increasing revenues from small businesses with tools such as Merchant Referral Bonus, Subscriptions, Mass Pay, Instant Payment Notification (IPN), and hopefully one day, APIs.
I had this "ReBay" idea originally on 11/26/01. On 3/1/03, this article on AuctionDrop was printed in the SJ Mercury News.
Senior Product Manager, April 2000 - July 2002
Alan is the Senior Product Manager for the Jamcracker Platform. He defines vision, strategy, and functional requirements for Jamcracker's web services delivery platform. He also develops the pricing strategy, interacts with media and analysts, trains sales, and assists on customer visits. He represented the company for WS-I (Web Services Interoperability).
Prior to the layoffs, his "SUMO" team of 4 handled the workspace (GUI), data warehouse, and syndication.. He drove the portal builder software selection process for the redesign of the portal. He also created the 2001 Corporate Roadmap working with the leadership team, marketing, architecture, engineering, customer care, web design, and customers. As the interim Customer Support PM, he introduced several new support products desperately needed by the field.
Prior to his promotion, he was the Product Manager for the Marketplace, during which he developed the strategy for the marketplace, identified and evaluated potential ASP partners, worked with Business Development to negotiate the contract, managed Engineering and Service Delivery to introduce the service, and delivered collateral to Marketing and Sales.
Partner Manager, July 1999 - April 2000
Alan was a Partner Manager at Worldprints.com. His business development role in the West Coast office includes promoting the Private Label Partnership (PLP) program. He was only there for 6 months before Excite@Home acquired the company.
Worldprints was a consumer marketing company building customer loyalty and affinity with image-based products and services.
Director, 1998 - June 1999
Manager, 1994 - 97
Used to be called Andersen Consulting when I worked there.
San Francisco office
Senior Consultant, 1993 - 94
Staff, 1991 - 1993
Other Miscellaneous Jobs
Alan was a Director in WESTT’s Consulting Services Group. He was responsible for managing business process design and implementing information technology projects. He worked at WESTT for over 5 years, helping the company grow from building GUI's for the factory floor to helping HP come up with their e-commerce strategy.
Mr. Tien has over 8 years of consulting experience designing and implementing new information technology tools based on core business processes. Mr. Tien has worked with Fortune 500 clients in the food processing, high technology, telecommunication, and service industry. He specializes in delivering mission-critical solutions developed from a deep understanding of the client’s business processes. He works closely with users from all levels and departments to ensure the new technology will support business objectives. Technically, he has been programming for ten years, with experience in most major languages and databases on many significant computer platforms. This technical breadth of experience gives him a solid foundation to estimate application development and implementation effort accurately and create practical system designs.
Alan has experience in leading technical teams in systems development and functional teams in business process and system design. Prior to joining WESTT, he was a Senior Consultant within the Technology Integration Services arm of Andersen Consulting, where he gained practical experience building large computer systems using a proven methodology.
At WESTT, Mr. Tien performed many essential internal tasks such as recruiting, proposal writing, sales calls, methodology development, and web site maintenance. He also initiated and heads up the partnership with ORSI America and GE Fanuc. With GE, WESTT successfully developed a Target Control System for the GM Shanghai plant.
Mr. Tien graduated from Stanford University with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering with a concentration in Computer Software. He has also attended several Andersen Consulting training classes, including Systems Integration, Technical Architecture Design, Client/Server Development, and Distribution Management. Furthermore, he has been formally trained on the software packages SCT Adage, Microsoft SQL-Server, Borland Delphi, Gupta SQLWindows, ORSI CUBE, GE Fanuc CIMPLICITY and Tracker, Wonderware InTrack, AT&T ISTEL Witness, and Informix database. As part of his initiation into the e-commerce world, he was trained in Java at Sun and then in TRADEX's e-commerce package.
Standards
Software Packages
GUI Development Environments
Programming Languages
Databases
Platforms
Presented at the ISA 42nd International Instrumentation Symposium on Automated Manufacturing Systems Using the Client/Server Model.
