VISA Hires Former Amazon and Seattle Police CIO
The finanicial services firm hires a former IT executive from Amazon.com who has also served at the Seattle Police Department.
Visa, Inc. has hired a former Amazon.com IT executive who was also a former CIO at the Seattle Police Department. He joined the financial services firm earlier this month as the Senior Vice President.
Mr. Greg Russell will be overseeing the financial institution firm’s internal technology as he will be leading the corporate IT department. This job will including looking over human resource, finance, marketing along with the company’s internal productivity levels and collaboration tools. Mr. Russell now reports to the executive vice president of technology at Visa, Inc. Mr. Rajat Taneja, after he joined the Visa team earlier in September.
A spokesman at the financial services firm stated that under Greg supervision and leadership the corporate IT department of the firm has been forced to implement best in class internal systems. These systems will likely differentiate Visa from its competition and expectedly position the company as an employer of choice.
The new Senior Vice President of the financial firm worked at the Seattle Police Department for six months where he was hired in March where he looked after and fixed the problem that the police department was facing in the data storage and management functions of the new technologies. Before getting a job at the Police Department, Mr. Russell was working at Amazom.com and led corporate applications there.
The financial institution has promised to hire 2,000 IT professionals by the end of 2017. The reason for increasing its IT workforce is that the firm plans on improving and expanding its digital financial services. At this point in time, particularly important are the software engineers and developers for the firm who can handle security of Visa as well so that internal networks and applications are created to support new forms of online payments.
Taneja stated that they are mixing things up at Visa and plan to do that mix quite significantly. For the future and vision of the financial firm, he wants his own people to do majority of the work themselves.
It is expected that Visa, Inc. is expected to see pressure in the next few quarters despite of the fact that the financial services firm is a leader in the payment processing industry. This pressure is going to come from foreign exchange volatility, increased expenditure and incentives and repayments. The firm’s growth is believed to be sluggish as compared to its growth in the previous years. The financial firm has faced a number of lawsuits due to interchange rates violation and pricing structures. At present, the firm carries a financial rank of 4 by the research firm Zacks.
