American Express hired Colleen Taylor to oversee its efforts to entice more U.S. merchants to accept the firm's cards.
Taylor will join in the newly created role of president of merchant services in the U.S. and report to Anré Williams, group president of global merchant and network services, Amex said Thursday in a statement. She joins Amex next week, overseeing the firm's relationships with the millions of U.S. businesses that accept its cards.
For years, Amex worked to achieve parity coverage with Visa and Mastercard in the U.S., a goal it ultimately achieved last year after it added 1 million of its branded decals to storefronts. Now executives say the challenge is changing consumers' perception of how many places accept Amex cards.
Taylor "is the ideal person to build on the momentum we have in our U.S. merchant business and fuel its growth into the future," Williams said in the statement.
Taylor most recently led the merchant services business at Wells Fargo, a role she held for just more than a year after earlier stints at Mastercard and Capital One.
"The payments landscape has grown in complexity with the move to digitization and many more key stakeholders involved in the end-to-end processing of a transaction," Taylor said. "I look forward to joining American Express."
