Visa Promotes Aurélien Pichon to Global Head of Client Services

Visa has promoted Aurélien Pichon, who had been its head of client services in Central Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEMEA) for the last two years, to global head of client services, effective immediately.

In his new role, Pichon will lead a global team of nearly 4,000 members focused on delivering best-in-class client experiences, Visa said in a Monday (July 1) email to PYMNTS.

Pichon will report to Chief Risk and Client Services Officer Paul Fabara, according to the email.

Fabara said in a statement emailed to PYMNTS: “Visa is committed to delivering for our customers and providing best-in-class client services across our portfolio. This dedication to our clients is what drives our success. I’m pleased to welcome Aurélien to lead Client Services globally; his experience has helped accelerate client growth and partnership across CEMEA, and his leadership will help us to continue to provide unmatched operational support across the globe.”

This move comes at a time when Visa said that overall payments volume in the second fiscal quarter was up 8% year over year. During the quarter ended March 31, U.S. payments volume was higher by 6%, international volume grew 11% and cross-border volume increased 16%, the company said when reported its quarterly earnings.

In recent news from the company, Visa Canada said June 27 that it has formed a partnership with Amazon in which cardholders shopping on Amazon.ca or the Amazon app will have the option to select “installments by Visa” as their payment method. Amazon joins about 100 other merchants in Canada offering installments enabled by Visa.

On June 26, Visa launched a service that delivers a digital card replacement via text or email to cardholders anywhere in the world. This value-added service, dubbed Digital Emergency Card Replacement, is designed to offer a convenient, fast and secure solution for cardholders who lose their card while traveling.

On June 13, Visa relaunched its SavingsEdge program for small businesses, introducing a refreshed program website with greater features and functionality, as well as hundreds of added merchant offers via Instant Coupons and Cashback Offers in more categories. In addition, small businesses can get notifications in real-time when participating cardholders earn cashback on qualifying transactions, as well as a cashback tracker to see how much they saved.

In another recent product introduction, Visa said in May that it launched an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered real-time fraud detection service in the United Kingdom. The company made this “Visa Protect for A2A Payments” service available to all banks in the U.K. after a pilot program in which it found an additional 54% of fraud beyond that identified by banks’ fraud prevention systems.