Beyond the Balance Sheet: PARV GILL
UPS is the largest courier company in the world, operating in more than 200 countries and with roughly 460,000 employees.1,2 Parv Gill has spent his entire career there—he joined in 1996 as a Finance and Accounting Assistant and now serves as Vice President of Global Cash Management and Treasury Finance. Over the past three decades, this has given him a front-row perspective on how global payments’ evolution has reshaped enterprise.
In one sentence: what do you do?
I manage the company’s cash with precision—protecting it, mobilizing it, and ensuring it is where it needs to be, when it needs to be there, because cash underpins every part of the company’s operations.
What do people get wrong about the reality of working in payments?
One of the biggest misconceptions about payments is that complexity equals progress. It doesn’t. The real skill is knowing when to keep things simple and focus on solutions that deliver genuine value to the business.
What’s something outside your job that’s made you better at it?
Working globally and spending time in unfamiliar environments has made me better at what I do. It teaches you to adapt quickly, communicate with a wide range of people, and make sound decisions even when there’s uncertainty—skills that are invaluable in a global payments role.
What’s a cast-iron work tip you’d like to share with us?
One of the most valuable work habits is speed. If something can be done, do it and move it forward. Acting quickly creates momentum, helps you learn faster, and gives you the flexibility to pivot when needed.
What’s a less obvious trait that makes for a good leader in payments?
A less obvious leadership trait in payments is knowing how to balance empowerment with discipline. People perform at their best when they feel trusted and able to contribute, so it’s important to create an environment where they can experiment and bring forward ideas. But it also requires leaders to provide direction, so innovation stays practical, focused, and responsible.
Parv Gill
Vice President of Global Cash Management and Treasury Finance, UPS
If you could redesign one part of the payments ecosystem from scratch, what would you change and why?
I would replace merchant onboarding with a live merchant risk passport, not a one-off KYC file. Ownership, trading activity, fraud, chargebacks, complaints, and settlement behavior should update in real time. That would let good merchants access payment services faster, while giving bad actors fewer places to hide.
What’s the best question a senior leader has ever asked you?
The best question a senior leader has ever asked me is also the easiest: “Why? What are you trying to achieve?” It’s a simple question, but a powerful one. It cuts through complexity and brings the focus back to what really matters.
What do you wish AI could do that it can’t do yet?
I would like AI to become much better at understanding payment context. It should be able to recognize the needs and behaviors of payment counterparties, while also taking into account the priorities of the organization, and then recommend the most appropriate payment approach. In some cases, that could mean paying immediately to avoid disruption to a counterparty’s operations; in others, it may mean choosing a different payment rail that better aligns with the company’s processes and ERP environment.
Other than AI, what is one specific way payments will be different in ten years’ time?
Payments will move from processing transactions to controlling access to commerce. Each transaction will carry identity, risk, consent, regulation, settlement, and liability in real time. The winners will understand the context of the purchase before they move the money.
What’s the advice you wish you could give “past you” as you entered this field?
Persevere and keep a long-term perspective. There will always be challenges and setbacks, but success comes from looking beyond the immediate moment, continuing to move forward, and embracing change as part of the journey. In the end, resilience matters more than any single moment.
If you weren’t working in payments, what would you be doing?
If I weren’t in payments, I think I’d have ended up somewhere in law and order. I’ve always been drawn to investigation, structure, and getting to the bottom of things—which, now that I think about it, is not entirely unrelated to payments.
https://www.jpmorgan.com/payments/payments-unbound/sources
Photo: Dave Imms
