Visa has announced that the company’s long-serving president, Ryan McInerney, will become CEO as of Feb. 1, with current CEO Alfred F. Kelly, Jr. transitioning to the executive chairman’s role.
In McInerney’s current post, which he has held since 2013, he is responsible for Visa’s global businesses in more than 200 countries and territories, the company said Thursday (Nov. 17) in a press release.
With 20 years of experience in the payments and consumer banking industry, McInerney has overseen Visa’s market teams, business units, product team, merchant team and client services.
Prior to Visa, McInerney spent three years as the CEO of consumer banking at J.P. Morgan Chase, and eight years as a retail banking and payments consultant at McKinsey & Co. following his graduation from the University of Notre Dame in 1997.
“I cannot think of a finer leader to continue to position Visa at the center of money movement in increasingly innovative ways,” Kelly said of his successor.
Kelly, who has been Visa’s CEO since 2016 and chairman of the board of directors since 2019, led the company as it grew across revenue streams, fortified its foundation and navigated a period of fundamental change in the payments ecosystem.
“We are extremely grateful for Al’s leadership over the past six years,” John F. Lundgren, lead independent director and former chairman and CEO of Stanley Black & Decker, said in the release. “His deep industry expertise and eye for the future have positioned Visa as a leader in payments in an evolving and increasingly challenging external environment.”
To be sure, McInerney will be taking the reins of Visa at an interesting time, as rising interest rates and the effects of inflation have crimped consumer and business spending and sentiment around the globe.
At the same time, the steady increase in online shopping and commerce has also brought with it a commensurate rise in credit card fraud, a persistent and costly problem that saps time and money from the company and the broader financial industry.
During Visa’s most recent earnings call, the payments network reported that total payments volume rose by 10% in its fiscal fourth quarter.
As PYMNTS reported at the time, the spending patterns reported during the Oct. 25 call were evidence of the continued digital shift, as well as a movement of the payments network beyond simply enabling that spend but also making it faster and more secure.
Kelly said during the call that tokenized credentials increased 9% year over year and are up 13%.
“Excluding Russia, we crossed 4.8 billion tokens surpassing the number of card credentials,” Kelly said at the time.
With a market value of roughly $450 billion, the San Francisco-based financial services firm is one of the largest public companies in the U.S. and will mark its 65th anniversary next year.
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