What happens when your work drains rather than energizes you? For Ahalya Vijay, VP of Product Operations at Worldpay, this realization sparked a pivotal career transformation from consulting to product leadership in payments.

In this illuminating conversation for Women Leaders in Payments month, Ahalya shares her global journey from Singapore to the crossroads of product and technology transformation. With remarkable candor, she reveals how an exercise mapping her energy levels across various projects led to a career-defining revelation: her superpower lies in cross-functional leadership, bringing diverse perspectives together to create tangible solutions.

At WorldPay, Ahalya leads Product Operations across three critical domains: strategy planning, analytics reporting, and operating model transformation. She describes product management as "a constant game of trade-offs," requiring data-driven decision-making to prioritize initiatives with limited resources. Her collaborative leadership style enables her to be a bridge between business functions while empowering team members to reach their potential.

The conversation ventures into artificial intelligence's transformative impact on payments, with Ahalya detailing how Worldpay is embedding AI into products while developing responses to its implications for tokenization, fraud prevention, and KYC. She also highlights open banking's potential growth in the US market, with Worldpay planning significant product launches in coming quarters.

Perhaps most valuable is Ahalya's distinction between mentorship and sponsorship. While mentors advise, sponsors "solve for your potential before you're aware of it," creating opportunities by advocating for you in rooms where you aren't present. Her advice for women in payments? "Own your impact and your story. Become comfortable talking about yourself because you're your best advocate."