Professional Role and Responsibilities
Krishna Mullapudi is currently engaged with Kiwibank in a senior contract capacity, holding the roles of Test Manager, Test Lead, and Senior Tester within the Payments domain. His expertise includes working on critical payment standards and protocols such as ISO 20022, ISO 8583, SWIFT Payments, and Card Payments. His position is contract-based, specifically focused on payments testing, indicating involvement with high-compliance and technically complex banking systems.
Krishna's responsibilities likely encompass managing and leading testing teams or initiatives for end-to-end payment processing solutions, ensuring regulatory and operational compliance with international messaging standards. His collaboration extends to test automation engineers as part of framework development and acceptance testing activities, underscoring a hands-on role in quality assurance and process improvement within Kiwibank’s payments infrastructure.
Technical and Domain Expertise
- Payment protocols and messaging standards: ISO 20022, ISO 8583, SWIFT, and card payments.
- Leadership in test management and test lead capacities.
- Experience with test automation frameworks, including test acceptance on automated scripts.
- Contract role implies adaptability and specialized domain knowledge focused on payments systems compliance and delivery.
Kiwibank Overview Relevant to Krishna’s Function
Kiwibank is a New Zealand government-owned bank with recent strategic initiatives emphasizing digital transformation and modernization of payments infrastructure:
- Transitioned to ACI Worldwide’s cloud-hosted Enterprise Payments Platform (March 2024), becoming the first in New Zealand to adopt a cloud-managed payment processing solution.
- Ongoing involvement in open banking API developments as required by Payments New Zealand and regulatory bodies, with Kiwibank committed to delivering open API standards by 2024.
- Adapting payments systems to support innovations like seven-day real-time payments processing and expanding merchant acceptance to include UnionPay cards.
- Financially, Kiwibank reported a net profit after tax of NZD 105 million for the six months ending 31 December 2023, representing a 7% increase from the prior period.
- The bank recently faced regulatory scrutiny due to failure in correctly applying fee waivers on joint accounts, affecting approximately 8,663 customers, leading to a warning from the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) in August 2025.
Organizational and Strategic Context Impacting Krishna’s Role
Kiwibank’s commitment to upgrading payment systems and regulatory compliance directly correlates with Krishna's focus on payments testing. His role intersects with:
- Ensuring compliance with new payment messaging standards and open banking mandates.
- Supporting Kiwibank’s digital payments transformation, especially integration and quality assurance of new cloud-hosted platforms.
- Working under scrutiny for accuracy and customer impact, given recent issues with fee waiver application, placing increased importance on robust payments testing and validation processes.
His leadership in testing for payments systems positions him as a key contributor to mitigating risks associated with transactional errors, fraud prevention, and regulatory compliance, all critical for maintaining Kiwibank’s service reliability and customer trust.
Recent Engagements and Public Mentions
- Krishna was highlighted in multiple LinkedIn posts and contractor callouts dated January 2025, referred to explicitly as a Test Manager/Test Lead/Senior Tester for Payments (Contract) at Kiwibank.
- He appears in professional contexts alongside other payments and card specialists within Kiwibank’s Auckland-based technology teams.
- The most recent project context indicates involvement with business-critical payment standards and testing milestones aligned with Kiwibank’s payments modernization agenda.
In summary, Krishna Mullapudi is a contracted senior testing professional specializing in payments at Kiwibank, actively engaged in managing complex test operations around internationally recognized payment standards and platforms during a period of significant payments modernization and regulatory evolution for the bank. His role is essential in ensuring accuracy, compliance, and operational excellence in Kiwibank’s payments systems, which underpin customer trust and regulatory standing amid broader organizational growth and transformation.
