Varun N Abrol

Varun N Abrol is Director – Payments Modernization at BMO, a position he has held since June 2025. In this role he leads payments modernization initiatives, with work spanning Payments Canada's Real Time Rail, Interac eTransfers, Blockchain, and Open Banking. He represents BMO at industry forums, including the US Faster Payment Council, and has coordinated with external stakeholders such as Payments Canada, the Bank of Canada, and the Federal Reserve. He established a payments council at BMO to address strategic issues across multiple initiatives, manage the consolidated payments roadmap, and identify potential partnership opportunities. He also shaped the commercial bank's strategy on the Open Banking Framework.

Prior to his current title, Abrol served as Lead – Payments Modernization at BMO from February 2022, leading all payments modernization initiatives for BMO Commercial Bank, developing the strategy and roadmap for the next-generation commercial payment platform, and performing vendor assessments and cost-benefit analysis on potential opportunities. Before BMO, he held the role of Director and Lead Payment Modernization Architect in Enterprise Architecture at CIBC from January 2021 to March 2022, where he led payment modernization initiatives including Real Time Rail. He brings 15 years of experience in product management, product design, consulting, requirements gathering, solution design, testing, implementation, and delivery of complex IT projects in the payments space. His educational background includes the Army Institute of Technology.