Chase Hires Elavon's Mike Passilla to Lead Merchant Services

Former Elavon president and CEO Mike Passilla will be JPMorgan Chase's new CEO of merchant services, a new role created to lead the financial institution's expanding payments and merchant services business, including Chase Paymentech.

In addition, Dan Charron was named president of Chase Paymentech, the company's global payment processing and merchant acquiring business. Charron had been the acting head of Chase Paymentech since March, and was previously head of client services.

"Merchants represent an important client base for Chase, and we want to bring together our full suite of leading services for merchants under one organization," said Gordon Smith, CEO of Chase Consumer and Community Banking, in a release.

At Elavon, a unit of U.S. Bancorp, the role of CEO was recently filled by Simon Haslam, who reports to Pamela Joseph, U.S. Bancorp's vice chair of payment services.

Passilla's plate will be full right away. Chase plans to launch Chase Merchant Services, 10-year partnership with Visa to provide customized processing and an end-to-end payments platform.

Visa has said the Chase partnership, which it expects to launch by the end of the year, will be the first of several similar partnerships.

Visa has also hired some former Chase executives. The card network recently named Ryan McInerney, the former chief executive of JPMorgan Chase's consumer bank, as Visa's new president. And Visa CEO Charlie Scharf once headed JPMorgan's retail bank.