Former Walmart payments executive Reed Luhtanen has been named the new executive director of the
Luhtanen has been a member of the council's board, and on April 13 will succeed Kimberly Ford, the council's first executive director.
"His unique experience at the intersection of payments-related public policy, financial services, corporate treasury, and nonprofit service will help take the FPC to new heights,“ FPC board chairperson Michael Bilski said in a Wednesday press release.
Luhtanen has served on many industry bodies, most recently the Federal Reserve-sponsored Governance Framework Formation Team, which created the U.S. Faster Payments Council, and the Corporate Advisory Group for The Clearing House’s Real-Time Payments System.
Prior to joining the FPC, he spent 15 years at Walmart, departing as senior director of global treasury, where he was responsible for the company’s payments-related public policy and public relations initiatives, network and processor relationships, and establishing Walmart’s payments acceptance strategies.
“I plan to focus on working across the entire payments ecosystem to deliver tangible, valuable results for our members and the U.S. payments ecosystem overall,” Luhtanen said in the release. “FPC members are everything to our organization, playing important roles as both idea generators and active contributors toward accomplishing our mission."
Among its many studies, the FPC collaborates to examine interoperability among faster payments solutions, identify real-world solutions that can ease adoption of faster payments, manage security risks and fraud threats, and address barriers to cross border payments.
