Janet O. Estep, an executive vice president at U.S. Bancorp, was named Tuesday to be the next president and chief executive officer of Nacha, the electronic payments association, in the first leadership change for the automated clearing house group in two decades.
Ms. Estep, who is also the president of U.S. Bancorp's credit card issuing and processing unit Elan Financial Services, is to succeed Elliott C. McEntee, who has been CEO of the Herndon, Va., association since 1988. He announced last year that he would retire at the end of 2008.
Ms. Estep formally joined Nacha Tuesday, and has taken the titles of president and chief operating office for the transition period; Mr. McEntee is to remain CEO.
Ms. Estep acknowledged that she faces a transition in moving from a corporate post to leading an industry effort that has a lot of projects underway.
"The horse is galloping along with the vision that all these things need to be balanced," she said in an interview. "Elliott and I will be joined at the hip — figuratively — and he will play a strong role as I come up to speed on all these projects."
Ms. Estep joins Nacha as the ACH network is in the midst of transforming itself from a system used mainly for recurring payments between known parties, such as direct deposit, to one that is now carrying a significant number of spontaneous electronic transactions, such as purchases at a merchant or online.
A test began in May of Nacha's Secure Vault Payments system for e-commerce. Another effort, which began in April, lets billers use the ACH network to present bills to customers online.
Nacha also is serving the International Payments Framework Group, which announced plans in April to establish a legal and operational framework for converting international ACH transactions between the United States and Europe into the specific formats used in each region.
Nacha's IAT standard-entry class code takes effect March 20, 2009. The international group's goal is to begin transmitting payments converted between IAT and the European ISO 20022 standard by the 2009 fourth quarter.
Steve Ellis, Nacha's chairman and an executive vice president at Wells Fargo & Co., said in a press release that Ms. Estep "has an outstanding track record in product management, technology, operations, and sales and marketing involving an array of payment products."
Ms. Estep joined the Minneapolis banking company in June 1997 as a senior vice president in charge of its merchant payment services unit. Before joining U.S. Bancorp, Ms. Estep worked for 15 years at International Business Machines Corp. in a variety of positions.
