Good morning.
Visa CEO Al Kelly announced he’ll hand the top job to president Ryan McInerney on Feb. 1 and become executive chairman. Kelly has been CEO since 2016, and his transition at age 64 is a sign that the Visa board is looking for stability.
McInerney, who was formerly at McKinsey and JPMorgan, has been president of Visa since 2013, and earned a spot that year on Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list. I spoke to both men shortly before the announcement and asked them about the main challenge Visa faces in the next decade. Here’s Kelly:
“We still have $14 trillion of cash out there being spent by consumers that can be digitized. There are many new use cases and opportunities. And we have the ability to grow geographically. Our growth opportunities are boundless. Ryan has the passion, energy and experience to take the company to new heights.”
McInerney concurred:
“In an increasingly digital world, we want Visa to be the best way to pay and be paid for everyone everywhere.”
I asked McInerney, in light of the FTX meltdown, where he saw cryptocurrency fitting into that payments future. His response:
“It’s very much to be seen. Crypto as we know it today is very much an asset class, and a volatile asset class. We do a lot of work with the asset platforms. And we do a lot of work on different opportunities using the blockchain. We think it’s possible (it will be part of the future payment system), but we are in the very, very early innings. It’s yet to be seen.”
More Fortune coverage of the FTX meltdown here, here and here. Other news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
Editor’s note: This essay was updated to correct Kelly’s age at the time of transition.
TOP NEWS
Twexodus
In a classic well-what-did-he-think-would-happen moment, Elon Musk’s threat to sack all Twitter employees who won’t commit to “working long hours at high intensity” has resulted in a mass exodus. With more people than expected declining Musk’s terms, Twitter has shuttered its offices until Monday, reportedly so it can figure out who should still have access. Musk tried to get more to stay, even promising to relax his antipathy toward remote work, but—with previous cuts already having halved Twitter’s workforce—the platform could plausibly start breaking down very soon. Fortune
Masayoshi Son
SoftBank CEO and founder Masayoshi Son reportedly owes his company around $4.7 billion amid the conglomerate’s massive tech-bet losses. Using loans from SoftBank, Son invested heavily in the firm’s tech-related funds, and those aren’t doing so great. His stake in SoftBank’s second Vision Fund is now worthless. Fortune
Meta's Oops
Over two dozen Meta employees and contractors have in the last year been sacked for abusing a tool known internally as “Oops”—it’s there to help out users who have locked themselves out of their accounts, but it seems some security guards and other Meta workers were using them to improperly take over user accounts. In some cases, hackers reportedly paid bribes for this service. Wall Street Journal
AROUND THE WATERCOOLER
U.S. policymakers have one last chance to avoid a recession: Find the 1.5 million women who vanished from our workforce, by Katica Roy
Dallas Fed: A bursting housing market bubble could once again plunge us into recession if policymakers aren’t careful, by Lance Lambert
Billionaire investor Barry Sternlicht used to think Jerome Powell’s Fed would threaten capitalism—now he calls its interest rate hikes ‘suicide’, by Alena Botros
America is heading for a soft landing while the U.K. is expecting its worst decline in living standards—ever, by Steve Mollman
You can stay in Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky’s home for $0. He’ll even bake you cookies and be your gym buddy, by Sophie Mellor
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.
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