Women Leaders in Payments: The Future Is Human with Alexandra Dolia

In this Women Leaders in Payments Month episode, Alexandra Dolia, Co-founder and Chief Operations Officer at Akurateco, joins Greg Myers, host of the Leaders in Payments podcast, to discuss her journey into payments, the leadership principles that shaped her career, and why trust, transparency, and human expertise remain essential as the industry becomes more automated. The conversation also explores alternative payment methods, payment orchestration, and her advice for women building careers in fintech.

Podcast source: https://leadersinpayments.com/2026/07/10/women-leaders-in-payments-the-future-is-human-with-alexandra-dolia-akurateco-episode-503/

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czoBbzvNLyA&t=1s

Find the full conversation below.

From Aspiring Heart Surgeon to Payments Leader

Host: Hello, everyone, and welcome to this Women Leaders in Payments Month episode. Today, I’m honored to have as our special guest Alexandra Dolia, the Co-founder and Chief Operations Officer at Akurateco. Alex, thank you so much for being here, and welcome to the show.

Alexandra: Thank you very much, Greg. I’m really glad to be here today, and I’m especially glad to be part of Women Leaders in Payments Month. I’ve been in payments for more than a decade, and I’m really looking forward to sharing some of my journey today here on this podcast.

Host: Okay, well, let’s start with a little icebreaker. If you could instantly become an expert in one non-work-related skill or hobby, what would it be and why?

Alexandra: Well, that’s an easy question. Since I was a child, my dream was to become a doctor, a heart surgeon, to be precise. I really dreamed of becoming a doctor from a very early age and almost until high school. Biology was my favorite subject, and I even won a regional biology competition.

I seriously considered entering medical university, but it didn’t happen because medicine also required me to study physics and chemistry, and I really did not like those two subjects. So I entered another university and later connected my life with payments, but medicine is still my passion. I constantly read the news and recent research, and I’m the one in my family who knows all the details of everyone’s health.

Sometimes, it even shows in funny ways. For example, I recently had to take my cat to the vet, and I described the symptoms and medical history so precisely that the vet actually thought I had a medical background. So, yes, if life had gone slightly differently and I hadn’t found myself in payments, I probably would have made quite a good doctor.

Ukraine, US Journey, Unexpected Career in Payments

Host: That’s great. So let’s talk about your background and career journey. If you don’t mind, give us a quick snapshot of your background, where you grew up, what you studied, and what led you into the world of payments.

Alexandra: I grew up in Ukraine, and the first turning point came when I was 15 and went to the U.S. for one year to live with a host family as an exchange student. Being a teenager, living abroad alone, adapting to a new culture, and making your own decisions really makes you grow very quickly and take responsibility. When I came back, I already knew that I wanted to become independent as soon as possible and build my own path.

So I decided to study marketing, despite the fact that my parents suggested that I pursue linguistics because I was good at languages. But in my third year of study, I started to understand that I didn’t really like marketing and was actually more interested in banking and finance. Looking back now, this makes sense because my family had a background in finance, and it was something I had seen them doing since I was very young.

When I was at university, I started working in my first year. Those were mostly administrative jobs, translation, and waitressing. But in my third year of education, I decided to find something more stable, and I applied for several contact center positions. This is how I ended up at Portmone, one of Ukraine’s first payment companies.

That happened completely by accident because, back then, I didn’t know anything about online payments, and I didn’t even know they existed. But once I was there, I became very curious about all this payment magic: how systems interact, why transactions fail, and how merchants and banks are connected. This curiosity brought me from a customer support position to a B2B role, where I worked with banks and integrations.

So I entered payments by accident, but I stayed deliberately because I really liked it.

Knowledge Sharing and the First Leadership Role

Host: Okay, well, was there a person, an opportunity, or an unexpected moment that helped shape the direction of your career?

Alexandra: There were many things that I did not expect or plan during my career, but they actually became formative for me. First, my entire career at Portmone was unexpected because, to be honest, I treated it as a temporary job. I thought that once I graduated, I would continue with my marketing career.

But the people at Portmone were the biggest factor in my decision to stay, and they helped make me who I am today. I was very surprised by their approach: they treated knowledge as something that had to be shared, not guarded. All of my managers would always explain everything to me in detail and with examples, and I never heard a question like, “Why do you need to know that?” This really shaped my approach and my philosophy that knowledge has to be shared, not guarded.

The second moment was my first leadership position, my first leadership role, which I was not prepared for. I thought I was joining an account manager position, but it turned out that I had a team reporting to me. I was 24, and they were all older and mostly men. It took me time to build my authority and find my own leadership style, including through mistakes. This also shaped me as the leader and professional I am today.

Strategic Sales and Developing Payment Expertise at Akurateco

Host: Okay, well, tell us about your role today at Akurateco and what part of your work you are most excited about.

Alexandra: I’m the Chief Operations Officer at Akurateco. I’d say that an operations manager or operations officer can do many things, and in different companies, this position includes different opportunities and responsibilities. But my role evolved and changed over the past year because I came back from maternity leave and had to redefine it.

Right now, two things excite me most in my role. The first is strategic sales. These are complex, long-term projects, such as tenders and work with banks and enterprise-level merchants. They are projects that require a very deep understanding of payments, including the technical side, as well as an understanding of the customer’s business model.

It’s a completely different level of engagement, but once you achieve the result, it’s very rewarding. The second, which is actually a long-term passion of mine, is developing people. Payments can be a rather non-transparent industry and a black box for people who are just entering it.

To make things easier for people joining Akurateco’s team and provide them with a shortcut, I created a structured internal online course that explains how payments work end-to-end. I truly believe that the more people know and understand, the better decisions they make and the better they serve our customers.

Why “The Future Is Human”

Host: Okay, well, let’s pivot a little and talk about leadership and perspective. So this year’s theme is “The Future Is Human.” When you hear that phrase, what does it mean to you as a leader in payments?

Alexandra: Well, I fully support this theme, and I think it matters even more right now, with all this fear around AI pushing humans out and taking people’s jobs. But I think this fear actually misreads what technology is meant for because it is a tool. It is there to do the heavy lifting and allow people to stay human and do what only people can do best, such as sharing knowledge and helping each other grow.

Akurateco’s case is literally an example of the statement that the future is human because our entire go-to-market strategy was built around it. In a field and an industry that are heavily obsessed with technology, we consciously decided to focus on people and differentiate ourselves through people, through the way we partner with our customers, and through knowledge and trust. Back in 2020, when we had just entered the market, there were already some very strong platforms with great technology.

We understood that we could not compete with them on the product side immediately. So we differentiated ourselves through people and through the way we support our customers. In the end, people are the real asset.

Our creativity, judgment, empathy, and the relationships we build are the most important things. Technology does not change that. Technology is meant to assist us with that.

In payments, as in any industry, technology and innovation are developed to make us feel better and make our lives easier. So, to me, “the future is human” is not a contrast to technology. It is actually a reminder of what technology is meant for.

Leading Through Automation and Embedded Payments

Host: Okay, well, as you know, payments are becoming more digital, more embedded, and more intelligent. What do you think leaders need to keep front and center as the industry continues to evolve?

Alexandra: I think that, first, a leader has to have a deep understanding of root causes. Payments are becoming more embedded and more automated, and there is a temptation to treat them as a black box that just works. That is a very dangerous approach because you always need someone who understands the root causes and does not stop at the first surface-level explanation.

The second thing is trusting your own expertise. For a leader, it is still very important to stand your ground when your understanding tells you something that the dashboard does not, because technology should sharpen judgment, not replace it.

The third thing, which is very easy to lose as payments become more digital and more embedded, is the human side, the human relationship underneath the technology. Embedded payments may feel frictionless and invisible, but there is always a business or a person on the other side who is trusting you with something critical. At Akurateco, we built our entire company around the idea that we are not just delivering technology; we stand next to our customers as partners. No matter how intelligent the industry becomes, trust is the real currency.

Why Being Indispensable Is a Leadership Failure

Host: Okay, well, what is something you’ve learned about leadership that you wish you had understood earlier in your career?

Alexandra: Well, being indispensable is a failure, not an advantage. In my first leadership position, I thought I needed to earn my authority by knowing the most and solving all the problems by myself. I worked late shifts, worked 24/7, and jumped into every problem myself.

It worked in a sense, but it also led to massive burnout.

The real lesson was that if the team performs well only when the leader is there, that is a sign of very poor leadership. When we started Akurateco, this was a lesson that I applied from day one, and we refined ideas together as a team. I saw them grow, take on more responsibility, and become more confident decision-makers. I really wish I had understood this when I was 24 and had just started my management career.

The Human Impact of Failed Payments

Host: Okay, well, let’s talk about the human side of payments.

Behind every payment or transaction is a person, a business, or a need. How do you think about the human side of payments in the work you do?

Alexandra: What I understood from my contact center position is that a failed transaction is never just a technical event. It is, for example, an actual customer left at checkout, a merchant losing revenue, or even a small business owner whose entire evening is ruined because of it.

When I worked late shifts alone in the contact center, I heard this personally from people on the other side of failed payments, and that perspective has never left me. This is also why customer support is so important at Akurateco. We work with our customers as partners, not just as vendors who deliver technology and then disappear.

We constantly redefine and refine all these integration processes, checklists, and communications because these operational details are the real experience our customers have when working with us.

Building Trust Through Transparency and Consistency

Host: Okay, well, you mentioned the word trust, and trust is such a critical part of payments and fintech. How do you think companies can build and maintain trust as the industry becomes even more automated and technology-driven?

Alexandra: Trust in payments is built on transparency.

People stop trusting you when they do not understand what is happening, when something does not work, and when they do not receive any meaningful answers that explain the situation.

The way we approach this at Akurateco has several sides.

First, people need to understand what is happening, and we invest a lot in educating people so that they can understand how payments work. When a client reaches out, I think it is very important for them to speak with someone who actually understands what is happening and does not just push the ticket further.

The second thing is being honest when something goes wrong. In any industry, things can happen, but it is very important not to pretend that everything is perfect. Instead, you need to acknowledge the issue and deal with it.

It is also very important how you deal with it and how quickly you do so. The third thing is consistency because trust is not built in one evening. It is a continuous process built ticket by ticket and conversation by conversation over many years.

There is no shortcut to it.

Alternative Payment Methods and the Need for Orchestration

Host: Okay, well, what is one trend or change in payments that you believe will have the biggest impact on people and businesses over the next few years?

Alexandra: I think that most people hearing this question right now will start talking about AI, right?

Host: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Host: I would deliberately like to avoid that because, for me, talking about AI in 2026 is like talking about electricity. It is already everywhere, and yes, it is trendy. But for me, it is not a trend anymore. It is a must-have. It is something that is already present in the industry.

So I would draw attention to something more specific and something that I have witnessed with my own eyes during my years in payments. It is the shift from card-only, card-based payments at checkout to a much broader mix of alternative payment methods.

For years, paying online meant typing your card details into the checkout, right? But now there are so many alternative payment methods, such as QR payments, account-to-account payments, local payment methods, and anything considered normal in a particular region or country. This does not mean that card payments are dying. It means that they are moving into the background because many digital wallets are still powered by card payments.

But digital wallets and account-to-account payments are actually becoming the face of checkout. Honestly, this is something I have seen with my own eyes because, when I came to Akurateco in 2020, only one out of ten connectors we built was for alternative payment methods. All the rest were card connectors. You would mostly just build an integration for Visa or Mastercard.

Now, nearly half of all connectors are for alternative payment methods, and this number is only growing.

I see this connector by connector with my own eyes. For people, the actual payers, this is mostly invisible because, for them, it means they are simply paying with something they trust and are used to. But for businesses, it has a bigger impact because every connector they build introduces a completely new flow that they have to develop and maintain.

Offering only card payments at checkout is no longer enough because, if you are operating online in different countries and do not offer a particular local payment method, you are likely losing the customer right at checkout.

But this is also a challenge. Keeping all these methods organized and maintaining them requires a huge amount of work, and not every business is ready to do that. It is a significant effort if you do it on your own.

The real goal is not only to have as many payment methods as possible, but also to align, orchestrate, and manage them properly through a single point. I think this is where a lot of value lies, and it is a big part of what we are doing at Akurateco.

Mentorship, Teams, and Women in Payments

Host: Okay, well, I’m glad you skipped AI because that has probably been, and will continue to be, a common answer, but I loved your response.

Well, let’s talk about mentorship, impact, and what is coming next. Who has influenced you along the way, whether directly or indirectly, and what did you learn from them?

Alexandra: I’ve been very lucky to be influenced by some great payments professionals who helped build my foundation in the industry. Early in my career, I also had some great mentors, including the CEO and founder of Portmone, as well as my co-founder, Andrew, who, as you mentioned, was also on the podcast. But I’ve talked about them a lot, and I would not like to repeat myself.

The more I think about this question, the more I realize that some of the biggest influences have also come from my teammates, the people I work with every day. My team has shaped me as much as my mentors have.

When you build a team in which people think independently and take responsibility, you start learning from them as well: from the way they approach problems, the way they handle pressure, and so on. I think this is a very good way to become a better leader, by learning from the people next to you and the people you work with.

I would also like to underline one particular point: a large part of my team at Akurateco consists of very strong and bright women.

In fact, almost half of our C-level team consists of women. In payments, this is not something you see very often, and I find it truly inspiring.

These strong and bright women challenge me, push me, and help me grow as well.

Advice for Women Entering Payments and Fintech

Host: Okay, well, what advice would you give to the next generation of women entering payments and fintech right now?

Alexandra: First, do not wait until you feel ready. Take the opportunity if you have the ambition and drive for it, even if it feels terrifying. For example, I was not ready for my first leadership position, but the truth is that nobody is ready.

You become ready by working on it every day and building your expertise. Expertise is the best equalizer in any industry because, when you know how things work, everyone in the room will listen to you, regardless of who you are.

The second piece of advice is to find an environment where knowledge is shared, not guarded. Once you grow, become that kind of environment for others. One of the proudest moments in my career was seeing the great women on my team grow into great leaders and professionals.

The final point, which is also very important, is to understand that a career is not linear, and that is fine.

After maternity leave, I had to redefine my position almost from scratch. It was very uncomfortable, but it also became one of the most productive periods I have ever had in my professional life.

Parenting, Leadership, and Life Outside Work

Host: Okay, well, let’s wrap up the show with one final fun question. What is one app, podcast, book, TV show, hobby, or favorite way to unwind that gives us a glimpse into who you are outside of work?

Alexandra: You need to understand who you are asking because I’m the mother of a young child. She is only a year and a half old, and my life right now is a constant balance between family and work.

My interests are very biased, I’d say.

I could name thousands of different podcasts and books, all on toddler-related topics that have nothing to do with payments. But I can also give you a real example.

Recently, I read Amy Chua’s book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. It is a memoir about a very strict and demanding parenting style. What I really loved about it was that it made me think about a fundamental question: when to push and when not to push. How much pressure helps someone grow, and at what point does it start to do the opposite? The funny thing is that I started reading it as a parent but ended up thinking about it as a leader because, at the end of the day, these are questions that leaders face every day.

When do you need to push your team for results, and when do you need to stop? When do high expectations bring out the best in people, and when do they not? So, basically, the book I chose to help me think about parenting and how to raise my daughter actually became a book about management. This probably says more about who I am at this point in my life.

Host: Okay, well, Alex, I think that’s a great way to wrap up the show. I know your time is very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here today.

Alexandra: Thank you, Greg. It was a great opportunity for me and a truly enjoyable conversation. I’m really grateful to you for having me today, to everyone who listened, and especially to the women in payments who are just starting their careers in payments and fintech. I really hope they heard something valuable. Thank you again.

Host: Thank you. I’m sure there were many great nuggets of value in that conversation. Thank you again. And to all your listeners out there, thank you for your time as well.

Until the next story.