Visa has hired its next chief risk officer (CRO), Paul Fabara, who will join the financial services firm on September 3. He will report to Visa chair and CEO Al Kelly.
Fabara will succeed Ellen Richey, Visa’s former vice chair and CRO, who recently retired after more than 11 years with the company.
Fabara will be joining Visa from American Express, where he has spent eight years. His most recent role has been president of American Express’s global services group, in which he has been responsible for managing all support groups including new accounts, customer service, credit, collections, asset recoveries, fraud operations, procurement, manufacturing, automation, facilities, sales and business enablement, enterprise strategy and execution.
Before working at American Express, Fabara was global COO for Barclaycard at Barclay’s Bank. Before that, he was COO for card services at Alliance Data Systems.
In his new role, Fabara will be responsible for a range of functions intended to keep up the integrity of the Visa payment system and protect the company and its assets from unexpected losses. He will be the main liaison with regulatory agencies that have supervisory authority over Visa in the more-than 200 countries in which the company operates.
He also will be responsible for payment security by promoting means to prevent, detect and minimize the impact of attacks on Visa’s clients and other payment system stakeholders.
‘We’re thrilled to have Paul joining Visa as our [CRO],’ Kelly says in a statement. ‘Trust and security is foundational to Visa’s long-term success, and I’m confident of the positive impact Paul will have on Visa’s risk strategy.’