he payments industry has grown over the years, both in the volume of transactions processed and in its overall wisdom; this evolution is the result of contributions from countless people making an effort to give back to the business as much as they've received. Mary Dees' service to the industry over the past few years is comparable to what many bestow over their entire careers.

Serving first as a member of the receivership team for Certified Merchant Services (CMS) during its investigation by the Federal Trade Commission for deceptive business practices related to marketing credit and debit card accounts to small businesses, and then as Receiver and General Manager, Dees helped the company through a trying time. She is also the immediate past President of the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA), and President, CEO and founder of her own company: Plano, Texas-based Creditranz, Inc. How has she found time to do it all? "I juggle a lot," Dees said.

Like the Solomon Island Eclectus she has at home, an exotic bird sporting vibrant, multi-colored feathers, Dees has earned many bright feathers in her cap through the different roles in her career. She's worked with acquirers, banks, processors, issuers, ISOs and merchant level salespeople (MLSs). And this has helped her develop empathy for people in every facet of the industry.

"No matter who it is I'm dealing with in the business, I can probably understand the perspective of where they're coming from," she said. "I've worked across so much of the industry and have been involved in so many different kinds of projects. Even though I'm not a 1099 contractor or a processor per say, people may feel that I can't relate specifically to or understand their issues. But what they don't know is, where I've come from and the experiences I've had along the way are not so different from where they are or what they're feeling or experiencing."

Dees said that in her role in the merchant industry, she has gone door-to-door in strip shopping malls, trying to sell merchant terminals. "I've been there; I've done that," she said. "I know how many pairs of shoes you go through. I may have had a different business card when I did it, but I've still done it."

Dees began her career in financial services in 1978 as a broker for Merrill Lynch in New York. Although she earned a degree in broadcasting and worked her first few years out of college as an Associate Director for CBS Radio News and Sports, she also was interested in financial services.

In 1979, she entered the payments sector by taking a job with Barclays Bank in the Visa Travelers Checks division; she moved to Dallas a year later as Barclays Regional Vice President and opened its first regional office there. In 1985 Citicorp Credit Services hired her to start its merchant sales office in Dallas.

"That's when they first started going national with their merchant business; in fact, back then Paul Green was the first ISO for Citicorp," Dees said. "Electronic draft capture was really just starting back in the 1980s. A lot of it was paper-based and very similar to check processing. That's when the market really started to explode." In her six years at Citicorp in Dallas, Dees grew that region to a $6 billion portfolio.

In 1992, she joined First Bank as a Senior Vice President in the bank's merchant business and became National Sales Manager a year later. When First Bank acquired Rocky Mountain Bankcard, she managed the combined $12 billion in merchant business.

In 1995, First USA Paymentech hired Dees as Senior Vice President of Product, Sales and Marketing for its commercial card issuing business. Over a three-year period, she assisted in the design and launch of the company's Visa Corporate, Purchasing and Business card products.

She also negotiated and co-managed a joint venture with PHH Vehicle Management Services, PHH/Paymentech, LLC, and helped design and rollout the combined organization's MasterCard-branded Fleet, Corporate, Purchasing and Business Card products. She became Paymentech's Group Executive of Third Party Processing in 1997, overseeing its wholesale acquiring business including network services, agent banks and ISOs.

In 2000, Dees left Paymentech to start her own company, Creditranz, a specialty company providing services in both the issuing and acquiring sides of the industry. "At Creditranz, we operate in slightly different types of applications in the payment processing market," she said. "We've helped develop closed loop processing systems that involve both issuing and acquiring. We're also heavily involved in pre-paid processing and with very large merchants that want to change and streamline their processing."

For instance, Creditranz works with EWI Prepaid Services, part of EWI Holdings, Inc., which offers processing on merchant terminals for pre-paid telecommunications products. Creditranz has also worked with large merchants such as Brinker International, owner and operator of the Chili's Grill & Bar and other restaurant chains. The company has also been involved in unique technology projects like introducing Radio Frequency Interface Devices (RFID) into the fast food market.

Dees said a lot of Creditranz' business comes from referrals, making contacts through her work with ETA and having 20 years' worth of clients from different companies in the industry. "In some cases, I have 20-year relationships with people who are also ETA members," she said. "We grew up together in the industry."

ETA President 2003-2004

Dees has served on ETA's Board of Directors since 1997, holding various positions including Secretary, Treasurer, President-elect and most recently was President for the 2003 - 2004 term. "My work in ETA has been the best experience in my entire career," she said. "It has allowed me exposure to the different nuances in the business and an understanding of all of the business issues and potential business solutions out there. I've met such a cross section of people who have incredibly creative business ideas, strategies and companies.

"While I always knew ETA had a lot of strong volunteers, people went above and beyond the call of duty in a lot of the things we put together (last) year. It could have been a very tough year because it was a very transitional year; we had a lot of different things changing at once. It was wonderful to see how many people in the industry really care about the greater good; to me, that's what ETA is about."

To be actively involved in ETA, you must have a genuine interest in supporting and giving back to the industry because the work is done purely on a volunteer basis, and most members already have full time jobs. Dees said while serving as ETA President there were many instances where she'd give at least half of her workweek. "It's really about a labor of love: At the end of the day being able to say the industry that you've worked in and loved, that has given you a career and given you an ability to earn a living, is better for what you've contributed to it."

CMS Receivership

During the investigation of CMS, and for a period after its settlement with the FTC, Dees took on the role as Receiver for the company. In September 2002, the FTC and the individuals involved in the action petitioned the court to have Dees appointed as sole Receiver and General Manager. The court ordered Dees' appointment on Sept. 16, 2002. She became instrumental in helping turn things around for a company that was barely treading water. With her partner, Don Krasnosky, taking over many of her projects at Creditranz, she was able to put her work there on hold temporarily and focus on the receivership.

"(Serving in this role at CMS) was something that I really wanted to do. It was a daunting task; my role was very complex, very visible and certainly very stressful. I wanted to do it because both parties asked me to do it, and I felt I could make a difference." Under the guidance of Dees, CMS took great steps to better its business. She helped the company improve its customer service stats, re-train its entire independent sales force and implement its first Ethics and Compliance Director position.

"From the first day that I walked in there, there wasn't anything that I saw that couldn't be fixed. Everything I saw at CMS I had seen somewhere in my career, and it was just a matter of identifying what the issues were, crystallizing them for people that needed to be involved in the solution, prioritizing what had to be done, attaching the right people to the right projects and everyone pulling together and managing through."

And Dees' ability to empathize with the people working at CMS helped her achieve success in her role there. "People have very emotional feelings about what happened, but one of the things that people don't understand or don't appreciate is that there were 330 people whose jobs depended on the outcome.

"These people answered phones everyday, opened the mail and got in their cars and drove home at night to feed kids, and the outcome determined people's lives. And it was very important to me, and to everyone involved, to reach a positive outcome."

And the outcome was positive: On Oct. 27, 2003, Fort Worth, Texas-based First American Payment Systems, L.P. announced its acquisition of CMS. The deal closed 18 months of scrutiny and rebuilding for CMS and established a new beginning for it as part of a new company with a new name.

Looking Ahead

With both the CMS receivership and a term as ETA President under her belt, Dees said it's back to business as usual for her for a while; however she's already planning new initiatives at her company and at ETA through her committee work.

Her focus right now at Creditranz is expanding the company through acquisition to deliver more closed loop products and services. With ETA, Dees is working on what she calls the "hot button" of the industry: trying to better protect companies from fraud.

"As an individual company, it's often difficult to get attention from law enforcement around the kinds of issues we have such as merchant fraud or cardholder fraud," she said.

"As an industry, it's important that we come together to have a greater voice so that our risk and fraud issues are seen in an aggregate, and therefore more attention is paid to them."

Although her interest in financial services goes back prior to working in payments, payments is the part of financial services that is always changing and growing, and that's what Dees loves about it.

"There's always something new to learn; you can't possibly ever get bored. But what that translates to is there's always something new, something different, something improved, something more efficient, something better about what you did yesterday or last year that can change for tomorrow."

E-mail Mary at mdees@creditranz.com .