As the senior advisor to Visa’s top global risk executive, Natalie Kelly thought she was ready for just about any risk scenario. Then the pandemic hit, ripping up all the rules.
COVID-19 triggered major challenges and opportunities for Visa, as unprecedented transaction volume shifted almost overnight from physical stores to online and mobile channels.
Visa had to scramble to help thousands of restaurants and other small businesses move payment acceptance from store registers to the web as fast as possible.
“People shifted quickly to online channels for basics — food, medicine, personal protective equipment — and scrappy businesses had to get online and go digital, or they wouldn’t survive the new world order. We had armies of people helping them,” said Kelly, senior vice president and global head of risk strategy, innovation, ops, execution, MIS and ecosystem security and integrity at Visa.
At the same moment, armies of fraudsters migrated online. Kelly's team needed to continuously fine-tune Visa's arsenal of technology and artificial intelligence-powered tools to filter out fraud at warp speed.
Kelly is one of American Banker's Most Influential Women in Payments for 2022.
For the quarter that ended Dec. 31, 2021, Visa's U.S. credit and debit card payments volume was up 32% from two years earlier, reflecting the mass migration to digital payments.
For Kelly, the point person tasked with managing risk strategy around data security while pushing innovation within payment operations and platforms, the pressure was unrelenting.
Even as in-store purchase volume began to rebound last year, legions of consumers have stuck with new contactless and in-app payment habits they picked up during the pandemic. And while Visa and payments processors continue adapting defenses against fraudsters, risk levels remain elevated.
“We’ve seen threat actors target every phase of the transaction lifecycle and attempt to exploit vulnerabilities in consumer touchpoints,” Kelly said.
First-party fraud, where consumers deliberately or mistakenly disavow legitimate transactions, also spiked during the last two years, resulting in $50 billion in losses across the entire payments industry, according to Kelly.
“It’s my team’s job to be a step ahead of the bad guys and we faced the worst actors head-on. In far more cases than not, we won,” she said.
But these extreme efforts left their mark on Kelly and her team.
“One day, unshowered and having barely slept, I’d had enough,” Kelly said, reflecting on 2020. “I realized I had to lead through change, taking my family and my team to a better place.”
Kelly instituted new personal boundaries around work time and got back into her pre-pandemic exercise routine. She ditched the elastic-waistband pants and started dressing in office clothes, even though she was still confined to her home office.
Next she mandated two daily 30-minute “mental health breaks” where no one could take meetings. For Kelly, that means walking the dog, meditating or listening to a podcast.
It’s paying dividends: “We’re taking the space we need to remain productive.”
The ability to zoom out and take a holistic view is one of Kelly’s personal hallmarks. A breakthrough moment in her career came years ago when she noticed that certain new products developed at headquarters and rolled out globally didn’t work for specific regions.
“I broke that cycle, and started bringing in the perspectives of my regional counterparts from the first day we began developing new global products,” she said.
Kelly credits “remarkable mentors” throughout her tenure at Visa who pushed her to take on challenges. “They trusted me with responsibility far above my pay grade and their confidence and support enabled me to grow.”
Now Kelly works to convey the “art and science of leadership” to others on her team as she continues to receive guidance from her boss, Chief Risk Officer Paul Fabara, who joined Visa in 2019, replacing longtime risk executive
“He inspires me to activate all the mentoring qualities I’ve experienced — trust, empathy, humanity and personal empowerment,” Kelly said.
Kelly likes to tell younger, greener employees on her team to “think like a CEO” by giving them vice president-level tasks while surrounding them with resources and help wherever they need it.
“I make my world a safe space for future leaders to learn,” she said.
