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Jayanath
Anton Dias

Assistant General Manager – Cards
People's Bank, Sri Lanka

Jayanath brings more than 35 years of building, advising and scaling card businesses across South Asia, East Africa and the Gulf — Sri Lanka, Tanzania, the UAE and Qatar. He currently holds end-to-end ownership of strategy and P&L for cards at People's Bank, Sri Lanka's second-largest state bank, spanning issuing, merchant acquiring, digital payments and the management of international scheme relationships with Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay and JCB.

His work pairs deep operating expertise — portfolio strategy, CVP design, merchant acceptance, risk and reconciliation — with the ability to diagnose a business problem, design a multi-year roadmap, and sell that roadmap to senior executives, regulators and government ministries. He has personally led national-scale negotiations and multi-billion-rupee scheme programs, and is now applying generative and agentic AI to payments strategy and operations.

Career

Thirty-five years, five countries, one discipline.

2021 — Present
Assistant General Manager – Cards (Head of Cards)
People's Bank, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Full strategy and P&L ownership for the cards business; ~3× portfolio growth and ~6× merchant turnover growth through the 2022–2023 crisis; negotiated a ~LKR 7Bn scheme program.
2016 — 2021
Head of Cards
Seylan Bank PLC, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Launched World Mastercard and Visa Signature; built a dedicated product & analytics unit; delivered LKR 3.5Bn net portfolio growth and 70,000 active cards in 48 months.
2013 — 2015
Head of Cards
Pan Asia Banking Corporation PLC, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Created Sri Lanka's first no-frills premium card, the 'Black Mastercard' (Titanium); grew the portfolio by LKR 1.0Bn with 25,000 active cards in 30 months.
2010 — 2012
Head of Cards
EXIM Bank (Tanzania) Limited, Dar es Salaam
Ran offshore card operations across 51 ATMs and 22 branches; built a closed-loop acquiring model for 16 National Wildlife Parks, adding US$400,000 in incremental annual revenue.
2008 — 2010
Business Head – Credit Cards / Senior Manager – Risk
ICICI Bank Limited, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Led credit card business development and risk management for ICICI's Sri Lanka operations.
2006 — 2008
Card Specialist
Bank of Ceylon, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Card product and operations development.
2002 — 2005
Head of Card Issuing Marketing / Brand Manager – Premium Cards
Sampath Bank, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Premium card brand strategy, campaigns and market positioning.
2000 — 2002
Head of Card Operations, Doha → Chargeback Analyst, Dubai
Commercial Bank, Qatar / Standard Chartered Bank, UAE
Core card processing and dispute handling; international chargeback resolution to global card-ops standards.
1990 — 2000
Head of Merchant Acquiring / Officer – Card Operations
Sampath Bank, Colombo, Sri Lanka
A decade building foundational merchant acquiring and card-operations expertise.
Core Competencies

Where the expertise sits.

  • Payments Strategy Review & Multi-Year Roadmap Design
  • Portfolio & Product–Market Fit Assessment
  • Customer Value Proposition Design & Refresh
  • Digital Wallet & Mobile Payments Assessment / Launch
  • Merchant Acquiring & Acceptance Strategy (POS / MPOS / QR / IPG)
  • Data-Driven Solutions & AI / Agentic AI Deployment
  • Senior Executive, Regulator & Government Stakeholder Engagement
  • Selling & Scoping Major Programs — Commercial Acumen & ROI / Value Cases
  • P&L Ownership & Financial Operations
  • International Card Scheme Management (Visa · Mastercard · UnionPay · JCB)
  • Innovation, Change Leadership & Process Re-engineering
  • Risk, Credit, Regulatory & Compliance Governance
AI & Technology Capability

Building at the frontier of AI and banking.

Actively applying generative and agentic AI to card operations, strategy and transformation — automating manual processes, reducing error rates and freeing team capacity for higher-value work.

AI Fluency Framework & FoundationsGenerative AI for Business LeadersThe AI-First ExecutiveAgentic AI: Harnessing AI Agents to Reinvent BusinessClaude Code in ActionDigital Banking Fundamentals

Education & Qualifications

  • MBAPostgraduate Institute of Management (PIM), University of Sri Jayewardenepura
  • Postgraduate Diploma in MarketingChartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), UK
  • Diploma in Banking & FinanceInstitute of Bankers of Sri Lanka

Industry Leadership & Regulatory

  • ChairmanPayment Card Industry Association of Sri Lanka (PCIASL), 2016–2018
  • Committee MemberFintech & Blockchain Committee, Central Bank of Sri Lanka, 2018
  • Working Committee MemberDrafted CBSL's Card Operations Guidelines, 2010

Languages

  • SinhaleseNative / Bilingual
  • EnglishFull Professional
  • SwahiliProfessional Working
  • ArabicLimited Working