Deborah McWhinney
COO, Global Enterprise Payments, Citigroup
Deborah McWhinney is a guiding force in Citigroup's stated intention of becoming the world's leading digital bank.
Her team enables services, some of them still being dreamed up, to facilitate better handling of payments worldwide. It has a pipeline of new products-many addressing critical needs in mobile or health care payments-that have either launched or are in the late stages of development, some with patents pending.
All of this puts McWhinney at the forefront of a business poised for significant growth. Already the emphasis within her unit is shifting in that direction. Last year the team was building out the product line and conducting pilots. This year it received additional corporate funding and increased its speed to market; now it is doing business in 60 countries.
Also this year Citi announced Aetna as the charter company in the development of its new health care payments platform, which enables patients to reconcile bills, make payments and receive alerts when claims are ready to be viewed, all in one place. The service will be offered to U.S. consumers by participating health insurers, with a public launch expected by yearend.
Because the regulatory environment has a major impact on the payments business, McWhinney often speaks with regulators on issues ranging from currency flows to customer privacy. She serves on several boards, among them the Institute for Defense Analysis, a federally funded research laboratory that performs analysis for government agencies.
