Do you come from a technology background?
I've been with Visa going on nine years. I've been in this position for about the last 14 months. Prior to that, I worked on the Visa USA side where I ran emerging products, which is really the corollary to this position. And then I ran the commercial group for a while as well.

Before that, I worked at American Express on the technology side, and with a couple of banks as well.

So how does having a hybrid background inform your view of IT at Visa?
I think it allows you to work more collaboratively with your business partners, so you understand what they're trying to do in the market. It enables you to think about what can be done with the systems in a way that solves real business problems, possibly even with the assets you currently have, just by using them a different way. But I think it's a very strong partnership between the two organizations.

Not everyone in IT organizations understands that. How do you sell it to your employees?
We have what we call VTEX, or the Visa Technology Exchange, where our business partners come in and explain the practical business challenges they have in the market, so we can help translate them into what we are trying to do with the systems we build and operate on a daily basis. That's how we broached the subject of Advanced Authorization.

What spurred the need for this kind of Advanced Authorization?
It's an evolution of fraud. We just want to make sure that we stay ahead of it and work with our members, merchants and other stakeholders to keep ahead. Ideally, what we want to do is detect and stop fraud before it happens. I mean, really that's what the industry would like to do as a whole, and certainly Visa is committed to doing that. Advanced Authorization is one way of answering that challenge.

Recent media attention has raised consumer awareness, so we're very sensitive to those concerns. We have a brand that people look to as far as trust and safety and security are concerned, and we take that responsibility very seriously. We want to preserve the trust that consumers and businesses have placed in electronic payments and in Visa in particular.

Is consumer awareness of credit card fraud a good thing for Visa, or a bad thing?
You're talking about an erosion of confidence. Overall, I think consumer awareness is great.

Look, 15 years ago, how often did you use e-mail? Almost never. And now it's part of your life. It would be tough to operate without it. The same goes for electronic payments, and our job is to make sure we keep driving that trust and that high level of security. It's important, and I think the fact that consumers understand is fantastic.

Did you know that dumpster diving for pieces of paper is still the most effective way to get information on someone? Consumers now understand that they need to shred documents.

So if consumers and merchants trust Visa as a safe form of payment, that's our measure of success as we continue to fight fraud, because fraud's going to be here. And we'll fight it in both its current and evolving form.

Visa arguably has the most valuable treasure trove of personal information in the world, the so-called "data at rest." How do you protect these data centers? Armed guards? Attack dogs?
We don't go into the details of how we protect the data at rest. Suffice it to say that we take the safeguarding of information very, very seriously. It's our fiduciary responsibility to the entire payment chain. We've hardened our systems and our access for those purposes, but that's about as far as I'm willing to go.