Transaction Trends

WASHINGTON, D.C. –January 14, 2020 – The Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) today announced the selection of ten young professionals to participate in the 2020 ETA Young Payments Professionals Scholar (YPP) Program. The ETA YPP Scholar Program, sponsored by Discover Global Network, provides scholars with mentors from leading payments companies, networking opportunities at ETA events throughout the year, and the chance to contribute to conference programing and webinars targeted to the needs of young payments professionals.

A committee of previous ETA YPP Scholars selected the ten participants from a pool of impressive applicants from across the payments ecosystem. ETA’s 2020 YPP Scholars class includes senior leaders, marketing and sales channel professionals, underwriting, security and risk professionals, product managers and analysts from a variety of finance, payments and technology firms across ETA’s membership.

“ETA YPP Scholars represent the breadth of talent, potential and achievement among young leaders in our industry,” said Jodie Kelley, Chief Executive Officer of ETA. “Congratulations to our 2020 class of Scholars. I am excited to see the innovation and leadership this cohort will bring to the payments technology industry through this program.”

“Providing promising young leaders with opportunities is essential to ensuring a future of continued innovation and growth for our entire industry,” said Kevin Jordan, Head of U.S. Acceptance at Discover, and an ETA Young Payments Professionals mentor. “Discover is proud to support the ETA Young Payments Professional Program and the group of exemplary Scholars this year.”

The 2020 ETA YPPs scholars are:

• Karlie Alms, Discover Global Network
• Nana Huo, Universal Processing LLC
• Kali Howard, Wells Fargo
• Ryan Gibbs, Advanced Mobile Payment
• Michelle Rizzo, Paysafe
• Melissa Schmidgall, BillingTree
• John Jakobe, The Strawhecker Group
• Tom Koski, U.S. Alliance Group
• Katie Wickham, Payrix
• Matthew Gibbons, TSYS

Now entering its fourth year, the year-long program is designed to identify and cultivate the next generation of payments leaders. The YPP Scholars receive complimentary registration, lodging and travel registration to ETA’s annual trade show, TRANSACT, as well as complimentary registration to ETA’s Strategic Leadership Forum, TRANSACT Tech Events and the ETA CPP Certification exam.

Additionally, YPP Scholars are matched with top industry leaders as mentors throughout the duration of the program.

About ETA

The Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) is the global trade association representing more than 500 payments and technology companies. ETA members make commerce possible by processing more than $7 trillion in purchases in North America and deploying payments innovations to merchants and consumers.