First Data Corp. has tapped its chief marketing and strategy officer to run its international operations.
The payments processor said Wednesday that John Elkins, who has been running the business on an interim basis since January, will become its permanent president of operations in the Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America regions.
Elkins will also continue running First Data's corporate strategy. First Data is a unit of the Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. private-equity firm.
"The global leadership that John brings to this new role will allow us to keep our forward momentum with no disruption to the strategy and plans we have in place," Jon Judge, First Data's chief executive, said in a press release.
Elkins was named interim leader of international operations in January when First Data, of Atlanta, announced it was combining its merchant-processing and card-issuing operations. Rather than running them under separate lines of business as it had historically done, the company chose to market them as one unit and split management between domestic and international markets.
First Data named Ed Labry president of North America operations at the time. He previously was president of its retail and alliance services division, which sold card-processing services to merchants.
