Before Andrew Hocking ever stepped into a boardroom, he was hauling rucksacks full of cash at racecourses around the UK. That early, tangible brush with money might have sparked something enduring—or at least seeded a fascination with how value moves through systems. It wasn’t long before he took that instinct into the world of data and strategy, first as an analyst, then across a series of executive roles at Barclaycard, Elavon, Network International, and Pay.com. Each move sharpened his understanding of what was broken in payments and what it would take to fix it.
In 2023, Hocking joined Tribe Payments as Chief Strategy Officer and stepped into the CEO role less than a year later. The move felt like a natural evolution for someone who had spent years navigating the friction points of the payments ecosystem. “Put simply: we’re not just a technology provider,” he said in a recent interview. “We’re a strategic partner helping clients innovate confidently in a complex payments landscape.”
At Tribe, that means building infrastructure that doesn't get in the way. The company’s modular solutions offer issuer and acquirer processing in one cloud-native stack, with over 250 customizable APIs and direct integration to six major card schemes. Hocking believes the industry is overdue for simplification. “Too often, businesses are stuck managing infrastructure rather than building great customer experiences.”
His leadership philosophy is similarly direct. “Learn the basics. Do what interests you. Meet the commitments you make,” he’s said. He encourages teams to take ownership and move toward uncomfortable problems, because that’s where the progress tends to be.
As new players emerge and customer expectations shift, he’s more interested in original thinking than competitive mimicry. “The challenge isn't to ‘catch up’ to fintechs,” Hocking said. “It's to think differently.”
