Tony Craddock, CEO and Founder

He encountered gift cards while advising a Swedish company in 2003. He saw that gift cards helped retailers make more money while satisfying gift givers AND receivers, and identified a niche that, as with customer magazines, customer loyalty and CRM, was likely to enjoy significant growth. He conceived the Giftex Prepay Network as a way of enabling businesses around the world to capitalise on this powerful business tool.

Tony is the joint author of the European Guide to Gift and Stored Value and editor of the monthly Global Prepay Intelligence. He is the leading expert outside the US in gift and stored value and has a broad network of contacts around the world. His vision for gift and prepay cards is that they not only generate significant incremental margin for retailers, but also supplement and then replace traditional loyalty card programmes, becoming a centrepiece in retailers’ sales and marketing strategies. Give him a stage and he'll engage and inspire his audience with this vision and how everyone can be more successful using prepay. 

When not at the office, he is often on his road bike, climbing up mountains with others wearing equally unlikely Lycra combinations.