Senior independent consultant

Payment systems
& cash management

30 years at the core of banking payment infrastructures — ISO 20022, SWIFT, SEPA, ESMIG. European financial institutions and global corporate groups.

Get in touch → Discover PAYLEM
François Lemaire · Biotos
30
years expertise
4
continents
15+
institutions
ISO 20022 SWIFT CBPR+ SEPA / SCT Inst ESMIG T2 Payment Factory CGI-MP
Background

A career at the heart of standards

From ISO 20022 standard-setting at ING to deployments at EIB and BGL BNP Paribas, each engagement has sharpened a rare expertise at the intersection of business and technology.

2025 – 2026
IT Business Analyst — Payments & Swift Tribe
BGL BNP Paribas · Luxembourg
CBPR+ migration, EBA Clearing (SCT, SDD, SCT Inst), ESMIG T2. Test plans, structured addresses, SWIFT Standards Release 2026, PSD2 API Luxhub.
2022 – 2024
IT Subject Matter Expert ISO 20022 – SWIFT
European Investment Bank · Luxembourg
Custom MT/MX mappings in Swift Translator for ESMIG T2 and SIC. Development coordination, test plans, production release.
2018 – 2021
Senior Professional Consultant
FIS Global
Quantum Payment Hub (Trax). Client projects: IKEA, Shell, Saudi Minfin, UCB. Custom configuration, end-to-end deployments.
2009 – 2017
Senior Consultant — Corporate Treasury
UTSIT
ArcelorMittal, Nexans (SWIFT onboarding), Veolia, Plastic Omnium — SEPA migration, European and US Payment Factory.
1998 – 2008
Product Manager Payments & Cash Management
ING Group
Represented ING at the creation of the ISO 20022 standard at SWIFT, EPC, Febelfin, NVB and ABBL. International Payment Factory.
1996 – 1997
Early career
Crédit Lyonnais · Citibank
Product management for savings and VISA/Mastercard. Quantitative foundations and risk analysis.
Expertise

Areas of intervention

Full lifecycle expertise across payment projects — from standard to code, from scoping to production.

⚡
Payment standards
ISO 20022, SWIFT MT/MX, CBPR+, SEPA SCT/SDD/SCT Inst, ESMIG T2/TIPS. Co-chair CGI-MP at SWIFT (2016–2020).
🏗
Payment IS architecture
Payment Factory, payment hubs (Trax/Quantum), Swift Alliance Access, IBM MQ messaging, PSD2/JSON banking APIs.
🗺
Mapping & Migration
Design and development of custom MT/MX mappings. Impact analysis, migration plans, cross-system coordination.
📋
Business Analysis & PMO
IT requirements, functional specifications, test plan management, release coordination. Agile/SAFe.
🌎
International context
Assignments across Benelux, France, Switzerland. Banking (BNP, ING, EIB) and corporate clients (IKEA, Shell, ArcelorMittal, Nexans).
🤖
AI applied to payments
Creator of PAYLEM — a conversational AI assistant for incident resolution in banking payment engines.
Professional associations
CGI-MP · SWIFT
Common Global Implementation – Market Practice. Member since 2010, co-chair 2016–2020. Working groups WG1 (Credit Transfer) and WG3 (Cash Management).
France Payments Forum
90 member companies and independent experts. Member since January 2025. Working on WERO, crypto-assets, instant payments, digital euro.
Regulatory deadline · November 2026

ISO 20022 Structured Addresses — Are you ready?

From November 2026, all financial institutions must transmit fully structured addresses in their ISO 20022 messages. 44% of banks will not be compliant in time. This is both a business risk and a short window of opportunity.

Assessment
Compliance audit of your MT/MX flows. Identification of unstructured fields, gap mapping, prioritised remediation plan.
Remediation
Transformation rule design, SWIFT Translator mapping validation, coordination with IT teams and CSM partners.
Go-live support
Test plans, UAT follow-up, release coordination. 100% remote engagement available — from September 2026.
Request an assessment → Available fully remote · Benelux, France, Switzerland
Flagship product · Biotos
PAYLEM
Smart Payment Ops

Built from 30 years in banking payment systems, PAYLEM is a conversational AI assistant that resolves incidents in payment engines — in real time, on-premise, without compromising data security.

◆Instant cross-system diagnostics (JIRA, logs, code, ISO specs)
◆MTTR reduction from 60 min to under 20 min
◆On-premise LLM — no data leaves the bank
◆Native JIRA integration and full audit trail
View the demo →
PAYLEM AI · Incident Bot
L1 Operator
Analyse PAY-4471 — why is the pacs.008 rejected by EBA?
PAYLEM AI
Root cause: The CdtrAgt/BIC field contains an 8-character BIC. EBA STEP2 requires 11 characters since 20/01/2025.

Fix: if (bic.length()==8) bic += "XXX";

Similar incident: PAY-3812 (Jan. 2025) · + Create JIRA ticket
Contact

Let's talk

Available for consulting engagements, technical expertise, or a PAYLEM demonstration in your environment.

Benelux & Paris
Response within 24h · Confidential exchanges
Engagement models
Technical expertise
Payment architecture audit, ISO 20022 / CBPR+ compliance review, migration support
Project management
Business analysis, IT requirements, test plan management, release coordination
PAYLEM · Pilot
Pilot deployment in your environment — 3 months, defined scope, clear metrics