Ronald V. Congemi founded the Star electronic funds transfer network in 1984, using his kitchen table as his desk.
This week, after two decades leading the company - and many desks later - Mr. Congemi, 58, stepped down from day-to-day management. He became the senior vice president for strategic industry relations, a newly created position, at its parent company, First Data Corp. of Denver.
His new duties include building and maintaining relationships with key clients, bank and payment associations, industry stakeholders, and other companies. He will continue to report to Scott Betts, First Data's executive vice president of domestic enterprise payments.
Debra A. Janssen, 48, took over from him as Star's president. He hired her last August as the president of First Data Debit Services with the expectation that she would succeed him.
"I really believed that at a certain point I'd want to be doing something else, and she was the right person to take that role," Mr. Congemi said in an interview Tuesday.
Though no longer Star's president, he remains its chairman and that of its Primary Payment Systems Inc., which focuses on risk management.
Though much of First Data's business consists of partnerships with banks or credit unions, Mr. Congemi said this aspect of the company is often overlooked. In the new job, he said, he will try to overcome the reservations of banks and other potential customers about doing business with it.
He also said that he wants to promote Star's research arm, which studies consumer behavior and payment trends and which he said is little known in the industry.
When Mr. Congemi began Star it was capitalized at $300,000. When it was sold to Concord EFS Corp. in February 2001, the price tag was $1.3 billion.
First Data acquired Concord in February 2004 for $7 billion, in large part because it wanted the Star network. In fact, First Data was so enamored of Star that it sold its own debit network, NYCE Corp., after federal regulators concluded that owning both could stifle competition.
Star began as a West Coast network and went national by acquiring 18 other regional networks. One of the most significant of those acquisitions was that of Honor Technologies Inc. in 1999. The purchase combined two of the top three EFT networks at the time to create the largest debit system in the country.
Mr. Congemi said he realized in the 1990s that the industry was consolidating and that Star would need to buy other companies. "There were only going to be a certain number of survivors," he said. "That's when I started looking for combinations."
But at his kitchen table in 1984, he said, he had no idea the network would become so big and so valuable.
"At the time, you usually don't think of those things," he said. "You're thinking about getting something launched, then growing it, then protecting it."
Before forming Star, Mr. Congemi worked for Visa USA for nine years. He began his financial services career at Texas Commerce Bank in 1969.
Ms. Janssen was the president and CEO of eFunds Corp. of Scottsdale, Ariz., before Deluxe Corp. spun it off in mid-2000. Star was an eFunds client at the time, and Mr. Congemi says he took note of her work ethic.
"I was very impressed in the way she handled us as a client and her company," he said. "She has a single-minded drive to make things work."
Gwenn Bezard, a research director at Aite Group LLC of Boston, speculated that the promotion may be a tentative step toward Mr. Congemi's retirement. But he also said that it made sense for First Data to retain Mr. Congemi, who has "a lot of contacts, basically in a sales position, dedicating his time to interact with the issuers participating with the networks."
Mr. Bezard said that Mr. Congemi's position of reminding banks of First Data's partnership business model is vital to the company.
"First Data is addicted to partnerships," he said. "That's one big reason why they have been able to build such a large franchise in payment processing."
