San Francisco-based Visa’s current CEO, Al Kelly, will become a full-time executive chairman of the board when McInerney steps into the CEO job. McInerney, who has been at the company since 2013, will also join the board. Kelly is looking forward to working with the new leadership team, he said at the company’s annual shareholder meeting last week.

Jack Forestell, who had been Visa’s chief product officer, will now be chief strategy officer as well, and will work closely with the company’s president of technology, Rajat Taneja, McInerney said on the call. “The two of them are focused on delivering a robust product and innovation roadmap,” he said.

McInerney came to Visa from JPMorgan, where he had been CEO of consumer banking, among other roles, following the start of his career at the global consulting firm McKinsey, according to a Visa filing last year with the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding his appointment. McInerney was unanimously elected by the board to the new role, the filing said.

Kelly has been CEO since 2016 and chairman since 2019. He has led Visa through a tumultuous period in recent years, guiding it through the COVID-19 pandemic starting in early 2020, racing to evacuate employees amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year and riding a roller-coaster with the company’s stock since 2020.

In recent months, Visa’s stock price has almost recovered to its peak reached in mid-2021 as the company benefited from revived consumer card spending and the return of cross-border travel.

Nonetheless, McInerney will have plenty of challenges to manage, including an ongoing Justice Department antitrust investigation of the company’s debit card practices and a European Commission probe of its incentives for clients. Visa disclosed in a regulatory filing on Friday that it’s cooperating in both cases. 

By Lynne Marek on Jan 30, 2023
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