Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
By John Stewart
@DTPaymentNews
Visa Inc. stunned the payments industry late Monday with an announcement that its chief executive, Charles Scharf, has resigned, effective Dec. 1. Scharf will be replaced by Alfred F. Kelly, a 23-year veteran of American Express Co. and currently a Visa board member.
Kelly, whose service at AmEx included serving as the company’s president, is expected to join Visa at the end of the month and take over on the same day Scharf leaves office. In February, he was appointed chief executive of Intersection Co., a provider of touchscreens and other media devices. Scharf has agreed after his departure to advise Kelly “for several months,” according to the Visa announcement.
“Charlie has been a visionary CEO, highly successful by any set of metrics,” said Robert W. Matschullat, Visa’s independent chairman, in the announcement. “He has helped transform Visa, the leading global payments technology company, into a technology-driven digital-commerce company and has led a strategy that will benefit this company for years to come.”
According to Visa’s announcement, Scharf resigned because he had concluded he could no longer spend enough time in the San Francisco area to lead the company. Visa is officially headquartered in Foster City, a San Francisco suburb, but has operations also in San Francisco. No information was immediately available concerning when he informed the board of his decision. “I am sad to have reached the conclusion that I should step down, but running a San Francisco-based company just doesn’t work for me personally right now and wouldn’t be fair to Visa,” Scharf said in the announcement.
Since Scharf took over from former chief executive Joseph Saunders in November 2012, he has accelerated Visa’s push in technology development and overseen a crucial merger with Visa Europe that restored Visa’s global coverage. Most recently, he directed Visa’s role in a reaching a landmark agreement with long-time rival PayPal Holdings Inc. that calls on PayPal to promote Visa’s network when PayPal users load their accounts.
While Kelly has been in his current position for only eight months, he makes it plain he is looking forward to taking charge at Visa. “I am extremely excited and honored to take on this role and build on Charlie’s work and that of all of the employees at Visa,” he says in the Visa release. “Visa is incredibly well positioned for continued success, and I look forward to joining this preeminent global organization.”
