Visa promotes McInerney to CEO as Kelly moves to board
Visa Inc said on Thursday that president Ryan McInerney would become chief executive officer next year, replacing Al Kelly.
McInerney has been behind the company’s push to deepen its foothold in new forms of payments, including the more than $120 trillion businesses send to one another each year.
The 47-year-old will take over in February, when Kelly will assume the role of executive chairman.
“We’re blessed to have a phenomenal successor,” Kelly said. “This is the right time.”
McInerney is taking the helm of a $449 billion payments juggernaut that handled $11.6 trillion in volume during its latest fiscal year.
The company, which has one of the most recognisable brands on the planet, has slapped its logo on more than four billion cards around the world.
McInerney joined Visa from JPMorgan Chase & Co as president in 2013 under former CEO Charlie Scharf.
At the time, JPMorgan lamented that it was disappointed to see McInerney leave the firm, where he oversaw the consumer bank.
“Ryan is a great to choice to succeed and build on all that Al accomplished during his tenure,” said Scharf, who’s now CEO of Wells Fargo & Co. “We were partners for years and I valued his intelligence, integrity, business instincts and friendship.”
As Visa’s president, McInerney has been at the centre of many of the biggest developments in consumer payments in the last decade, including the shift to chip cards and the rapid adoption of tap-to-pay cards around the world.
He also helped oversee work with mobile payment providers such as Apple Inc.
“McInerney has been viewed as heir apparent, and his broad-based experience and track record at Visa makes him well suited for the CEO role,” Sanjay Sakhrani, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, said in a note to clients.
“Mr Kelly has done a solid job of leading Visa over his tenure and will be missed, but we expect a smooth transition.”
McInerney has pushed Visa to look beyond consumer payments, where investors have long worried there’s less room for growth. At a company investor day in 2020, he identified $185 trillion in transactions that Visa could tap.
“We see a lot of big opportunities for growth beyond what most people know us for by moving into new money movement flows,” McInerney said in an interview on Thursday. “The addressable market for those are even bigger.”
Under Kelly, who took over in 2016, Visa’s revenue has more than doubled while shares climbed 191%. That’s bigger than the 75% rise of the 30-company Dow Jones Industrial Average over that same period.
Kelly, who turns 65 next year, said he always thought that age was a time where he would consider doing something different. “I have other interests and other things I want to do.”