PULSE Debit/ATM Network Taps New Product Management, Operations Leaders

The nationwide debit/ATM network PULSE has tapped Jennifer Schroeder to serve as its executive vice president for product management, the company announced Wednesday (Jan. 22).

Previously serving as its executive vice president of operations, Schroeder steps in for Judith McGuire, who is now serving in an executive role with PULSE’s parent company, Discover Financial Services.

Schroeder is tasked with growing Discover Debit and advancing PULSE capabilities. She will continue to grow the company’s competitive payment choices while accommodating the ever-changing habits of buyers and their digital culture.

“Throughout Jennifer’s more than six years at PULSE and 20 years at Discover, she has succeeded in creating best-in-class client service organizations,” said Dave Schneider, president of PULSE. “We look forward to her ongoing contributions to PULSE’s success as she leads our product strategy.”

Jim Lerdal will take over the position of executive vice president of operations. Lerdal was vice president of fraud operations and compliance for PULSE. He was instrumental in leading the enhancement of PULSE’s DebitProtect fraud-detection service. He also had a leadership role in implementing an anomaly-detection program.

A Discover Financial Services company, PULSE is one of the nation’s leading debit/ATM networks. Financial institutions, merchants, processors and ATM deployers worldwide rely on PULSE’s inventory of solutions.

In November, PULSE said it adopted the FICO Falcon Platform to bring new and innovative fraud detection services to its network of more than 4,100 debit issuers. Real-time scoring is among the features in deploying the FICO Falcon Platform. FICO said the platform detects potential fraud while remaining invisible to the consumer during legitimate transactions.

The FICO platform serves as the foundation of the DebitProtect fraud detection service, said PULSE. Debit transactions have seen an accelerating growth rate, from 5.3 percent in 2017 to 6.7 percent in 2018, reaching an estimated 68.5 billion transactions.

“In this era of digital commerce, criminals constantly work to beat the system, so the system has to work equally hard to keep up,” Schneider said at the time. “With the Falcon Platform and its team of experts, we have the flexibility and capacity needed to create and launch new fraud-detection and risk-mitigation services that are benefiting our issuers today, and we have a foundation we can build upon into the future.”