Jane Larimer's tenacity paid off when she was named president and CEO of the electronic payments association Nacha in 2019, after starting there 25 years ago as the organization’s first in-house legal counsel.
But Larimer, who is one of PaymentsSource’s Most Influential Women in 2021, says she learned a long time ago that the quickest way to success is by working as a team.
“Fresh out of college I became the manager of a new bank branch, starting from scratch with 12 people — most of them older — reporting to me,” Larimer recalled.
It was daunting, but Larimer quickly established a strong rapport with the staff. Within a few months, her branch was winning awards for its fast growth.
“I realized then that I enjoyed forming a team, creating goals and having everyone work together to achieve them,” said Larimer, who next decided to attend law school to advance her career.
After working in banking law at an Atlanta firm after law school, Larimer joined Nacha and over the years rose to executive vice president of ACH network administration and general counsel. She was appointed chief operating officer in 2017.
The CEO role opened up when Janet Estep retired after 13 years as Nacha’s top executive. Larimer was promoted to replace her, creating a seamless transition from one veteran to another.
This continuity was crucial at a time of major industry initiatives and unexpected challenges brought on by COVID-19.
“The pandemic revealed that the U.S. is still relying too much on checks,” Larimer said. “While ACH is industrial-strength and moved hundreds of millions of stimulus payments and additional unemployment benefits, our reliance on checks is still heavier than it should be.”
Like other organizations, Nacha rapidly devised new systems for employees working from home, building on existing cross-border communication resources.
But remote offices don’t provide quite the same chemistry that comes from working shoulder-to-shoulder with colleagues, Larimer believes.
“You miss the spontaneous hallway conversations when you have to plan for every conversation. I believe there will always be a need for face-to-face communication,” she said.
The key payments milestones Larimer helped Nacha achieve over the years include developing rules to convert paper food stamps to electronic card-based transactions, and creating a way for check transactions to clear electronically, and making Same-Day ACH widely available in 2020.
To get the wheels turning on new industry projects, Larimer’s secret weapon is a single word: “Iterate.”
“Get something down, no matter how small, and build by coming back to it again and again. Iteration is also the secret to consensus-building. If you ask enough questions, you get enough feedback, and you start finding the threads,” she said.
When leaders are faced with major decisions, Larimer said they should be wary of rushing their decisions when under pressure.
“Be sure you’re responding and not just reacting. Really think about what each decision could mean, and what it tells us about where we should be going,” she said.
In the same vein, Larimer several years ago reflected on her long-term personal impact. She discovered a program called REACH for Uganda, which has educated hundreds of children and serves as a model for what other schools in Africa could be. She’s been directly sponsoring a child’s education in Uganda for the last four years.
Larimer is also working on the vision and extended strategy for Nacha’s next several years, working to advance the ACH network as payments become increasingly digital, instantaneous and global.
“The challenge with so much innovation, as many in the financial services are very aware of, is gaining traction through the noise and being able to really create change,” she said.
