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Payments giant Visa Inc. announced Alfred F. Kelly Jr., a former American Express Co. executive who joined Visa in 2016 as chief executive, will leave that role as Ryan McInerney, Visa’s current president, assumes the title Feb. 1.
McInerney came to Visa in 2013 having held the chief executive of consumer banking position at JPMorgan Chase & Co. since 2010, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to that, he was a principal at McKinsey & Co., a consulting firm, from 1997 to 2005.
Announced Friday, the CEO transition comes as Visa’s payments volume totaled $10.4 trillion in 2021, up 42.5% from $7.3 trillion in 2017, Kelly’s first full year in the leadership role. In the same period, the number of Visa-branded cards increased 15.6% from 3.2 billion to 3.7 billion in 2021. The biggest growth, however, was on transactions processed on Visa’s networks. That volume totaled 164.7 billion in 2021, a 48.1% increase from 111.2 billion in 2017
Kelly, in a statement, praised McInerney. “Ryan has boundless energy and passion for this business and in his role as president, and as my close partner for the past six years, he has become intimately familiar with how Visa operates and the exciting opportunities this industry presents,” Kelly says. In the nine years since joining Visa McInerney has overseen multiple business units.
Kelly succeeded Charles Scharf as Visa CEO. At the time, Kelly was a member of the Visa board of directors. Kelly became chairman of the board in 2019 and after Feb. 1 will be the executive chairman, a new position. Scharf is now chief executive and president of Wells Fargo & Co.
Prior to his Visa tenure, Kelly worked at AmEx from 1987 to 2010 and had been president and chief executive at Intersection, a media company backed by Alphabet Inc.
