Julie Fergerson on Her Path in Payments

As the CEO of the MRC – a global non-profit membership association which connects ecommerce professionals through educational courses, conferences, webinars, networking events, and industry-leading content – Julie Fergerson heads up an organization that informs and empowers over 750 members, including many of the world’s biggest brands.

And, off the back of the MRC’s partnership with Checkout.com – which allows MRC members to access MRC’s Payment Essentials and Fraud Essentials course at no cost – we wanted to find out more about Julie, and the trailblazing path she’s cut through the industry to one of payments’ top jobs.

Below, we trace Julie Fergerson’s path in payments: from a 10-year-old watching, wide-eyed, in 1978 as her dad brought home a computer, to one of the payments area’s most influential figures.

So, what’s Julie’s take on the latest payment trends, especially fraud and AI on the heels of our recently announced sponsorship of the MRC Fraud Essentials course? And, equally important, what do merchants need to know so that they can effectively tackle evolving digital fraud with practical prevention insights?

Read on to find out.

The genesis of a passion for technology

Julie Fergerson remembers the day her dad brought home a computer. The year was 1978, and – connecting, via a modem, at 300 baud – it was one of the fastest money could buy.

The 10-year-old Julie fell immediately in love.

Over the years, Julie’s dad taught her how to write code and to program. “I was hooked,” she explains, “on technology. That's what's always fascinated me – the tech side of things. I’m always asking: how does technology make our lives better? And how could it?”

Fast forward to 1986, and Julie was at college – until, that was, it became clear that she was doing more advanced things, on her computer at home and in her own time, than were being taught by her lecturers. She soon landed a job at IBM.

“I was a sponge”, Julie says, thinking back to her time at IBM. “I was so lucky to have such amazing people to work with”. Julie began in the Marketing department, where her role was to listen to customer interviews, pick out features, and add them into a spreadsheet. Soon picking up on the process’s inefficiencies, Julie created a database, then began to evolve and expand it.

One thing led to another, and before long Julie’s career at IBM was blossoming: she was in charge of IBM’s IBMs AIX server farm, and owning the help desk for the company’s Austin site.

This was, of course, while the internet revolution was continuing to gain pace and proliferate – the perfect backdrop for a young, tech-savvy computer whizz to start her own company.

And that’s exactly what Julie did, leaving IBM to start her first business, ClearCommerce, in 1995. Today, ClearCommerce describes itself as offering “payment processing services for high-volume enterprises that require robust, highly reliable and secure transaction processing”. Julie herself, however, puts it in her own, typically humble, words. “I wanted to help people sell stuff online”, she says, and she did – ClearCommerce’s customer base quickly grew to thousands of merchants, and Julie ended up selling it to FIS in 2005 after a decade of success.

Following that, Julie continued to immerse herself in the product space. Until one day, when Julie met with three of her old ClearCommerce clients for what would turn out to be a history-making lunch. The companies? Dell. HP. And Apple.

“The companies were arch-rivals”, Julie explains, “but they had a common enemy: fraud.” Out of that lunchtime conversation, the Merchant Risk Council (MRC) was born.

Today, the MRC counts as members 750 merchants – including, of course, Checkout.com, and many other brands such as Amazon, Airbnb, eBay, Hertz, LinkedIn, Major League Baseball – and is trailblazing a path to safer, more secure online transactions.

The power of partnerships: the MRC and Checkout.com team up

From early in her career, Julie has understood the importance of partnerships – after all, the MRC’s 750-strong base of members is built on them.

“I’ve always said the key to a successful partnership is common goals,” says Julie. “When you’re aligned to a common goal – like the MRC, Checkout.com, and our shared commitment to driving down fraud, for example – then it’s the basis for a really good, strong partnership.”

It’s this ethos, and this commitment to shared aspirations and ambitions, that makes the MRC’s recent partnership with Checkout.com such a natural fit.

This educational partnership unlocks free access to the MRC’s Payments Essentials course – which you can learn more about below – for MRC members. “Recruiting smart and skilled talent to support [consumer reach and expansion strategies] is only going to become more important. We’re glad that with partners like Checkout.com, the MRC will continue to deliver [this vital payments knowledge.]” 

It’s timely, then, that Checkout.com and MRC announced yet further collaboration – with Checkout.com set to sponsor MRC’s Fraud Essentials course, too – at the MRC’s member-only conference in San Diego, which took place between September 9 and 11, 2024.

Checkout.com and MRC have enjoyed a long-standing partnership on major projects, including the annual MRC conferences. We value the involvement of Checkout.com leaders like Jim Cho, VP of Revenue Growth for North America, who serve on the MRC Board.

This year, we have further strengthened our collaboration by having Checkout.com sponsor the MRC’s Payments Essentials and Fraud Essentials courses, underscoring our shared dedication to advancing payments education. Julie adds, “Our team is in touch with Checkout.com all the time: strategizing, planning, and executing. There’s a really strong relationship there, which is important because if you don’t have excellent people on board, it doesn’t work. Checkout.com has an incredible team and we love working with them.”

Navigating industry trends that are pushing roles to the top of the recruitment pile

In 2024, there are few industries in which “trends” and “AI” don’t belong in the same sentence – and payments is no different.

AI has been a feature of payments for as long as Julie can remember, on the sides of both good (fraud detection and customer service) and bad (spear phishing and bot attacks). More recently, however, the high resource costs of AI – from both a financial perspective, and the extensive tech infrastructure required to maintain it – means Julie is seeing merchants having to slow down and scale back their AI setups. “I’ve heard people saying AI is going to replace all our jobs and change the world overnight,” she says. “But the good news is, it’s so expensive and takes so much computing power and electricity that I think we have a little more time to get prepared”.

That’s not to say AI isn’t playing a huge role in payments right now – or that its influence will wane too much going forward. Julie points to Rufus – Amazon’s new, AI-powered assistant – as an example of AI’s applications in online customer service, as well as machine learning’s vital role in monitoring transactions for unauthorized activity.

On the topic of fraud, a significant trend – the “biggest fraud trend that everybody needs to be paying attention to”, Julie says – is that fraudsters are gaming the system: figuring out the loopholes in merchants’ customer service and refund policies, and gaming chatbots for financial gain across the entire ecommerce ecosystem. Julie explains: “We’ve never had to think about end-to-end velocity, like high-volume attacks and all these fringe areas of payment fraud, but we’re having to now, because it’s bad. It’s really bad.”

A third trend Julie has seen? The growth of payments into a C-Suite concern. She believes Payments is taking an increasingly prominent seat at the top table of commerce – and it’s because those businesses are waking up to the fact that payments (and, by extension, payment security) have powerful knock-on effects on the consumer experience.

“It’s about creating that loyalty and stickiness among consumers, and recognizing that how a consumer feels after having a bad experience with your brand materially matters.” It’s these customer-centric concerns, then – along with wider regulatory pressures on the payments and fraud industries – that are pushing roles such as Head of Payments and Chief Security Officer to the top of the recruitment pile.

Ultimately, Julie explains, these developments are part of an even wider trend, in which businesses are increasingly viewing payments as a strategic weapon when it comes to building consumer trust, engendering customer loyalty, and differentiating their brand from the competition. “I was watching Sony’s latest Corporate Strategy Meeting the other day, where it was announcing its most recent tech developments. They had a section dedicated to discussing what they’re doing around payments, which I’ve never seen a company like Sony do before.

“It actually gave me goosebumps!”

Challenges and strategies

All successful paths in payments come with their share of potholes and pitfalls – so what challenges has Julie faced on her journey in the space?

Well, Julie was just 30 – and in the early days of a career that would eventually lead to payments – when the 2008 financial crash happened. “I definitely learned the hard way that you had to be exceptional to continue to drive revenue targets,” Julie says.

16 years on (and one pandemic later), Julie’s key hurdles are of a different nature.

“One of the big challenges I’m facing at the moment is that the younger, incoming generation of payment professionals is hungrier than ever for knowledge. They haven’t had the same kind of training as more seasoned industry professionals, and will have to work harder to get it – so it’s our role to ensure that those development pathways, and educational opportunities, exist for those young payments professionals to progress.

“It’s interesting, because I was raised with such a strong work ethic. But the moment that work ethic gets ‘switched on’ from someone in the younger generation, they’re a million times better than my generation ever was. But figuring out how to ‘flip that switch’ – to turn on that high-powered work ethic, talent, and drive – is crucial. It’s something I think about a lot.”

One challenge it’s certainly nice to have is that, when it comes to Julie’s colleagues at the MRC, everyone is a hard worker – perhaps too hard! “Our biggest challenge internally,” Julie says, somewhat paradoxically, “is that everybody is an ‘A player’ – we all want to make everybody happy, all the time. It’s hard to say no – and I recognize that for our team and company.”

Another challenge? Bridging what Julie perceives as a kind of ‘information gap’ between the twin, inextricably interlinked concepts of payments and fraud. “It always surprises me, when I meet payment people, how little they know about fraud. They often have no idea what kind of impact their payment decisions have on fraud. They think ‘oh, that’s an increase in revenue’ – but if it turns into fraud, they don’t see the downstream impact.

“So I always tell people that payments and fraud is like breathing in and breathing out – if you have one, you’ll always have the other.” That’s why the Fraud sponsorship is especially timely, as it highlights the ongoing importance of addressing these issues together

That’s partly why, in her role at the MRC, Julie encourages a relaxed approach to attending community calls – with just two exceptions. “I tell everybody here to join all the community calls they can, but if they can only join two, join the payments call – and the fraud one.

“It’s the only possible way to keep up.”

A commitment to continuous learning and growth

Asked about the key to her success, Julie’s answer is almost paradoxical.

Because, she says, it’s not the things she knows that have taken her to one of the foremost roles in global payments – it’s the things she doesn’t know.

“The thing that’s made me most successful is when people ask me for information and I don’t know the answer,” Julie says. “I respond with ‘I don’t know, but I can find out!’ It’s about being authentic, and not making up numbers. The older I get, the more I value that authenticity – the power of being able to say ‘I don’t know’”.

So, what kind of advice does Julie have for young payments professionals, or those looking for a way into the field?

“For the younger generations, I always say: take as much training as you can. Attend all the conferences you can. And, if you don’t understand something – you don’t know what an acronym stands for, for example – don’t be afraid to ask. And to keep asking.

“That’s how you learn in the payments space. There’s no degree you can do to get into it, it’s all about learning. It really is the School of Hard Knocks!”

As for how exactly emerging generations of payment professionals can get up to speed with this fast-evolving, ever-growing industry, Julie recommends the MRC’s Resource Center.

You’ll need to be a member to unlock its content, but there is a wealth of resources – including, says Julie, “almost eight years’ worth of Vegas presentations” – such as webinars, whitepapers, and case studies. Doing this reading and research, Julie says, “is critical, because it gets us, as payment professionals, speaking the same language – and allows you, as someone entering that workforce and space, to discover what’s interesting to you.”

Looking for training that’ll get you up to speed in the payments and fraud spaces? Try:

• Fraud Essentials: an eLearning course providing an in-depth understanding of online fraud – including marketplace fraud, credit card fraud, and ‘friendly’ fraud – for payment professionals, ecommerce analysts, and fraud specialists.
• Payment Essentials: an eLearning course equipping you with the foundational knowledge and insights to work in the payments space. Ideal for ecommerce payment professionals, fraud prevention specialists, financial analysts, and compliance officers.

Thanks to Checkout.com, MRC members now receive complimentary access to its Payment Essentials and Fraud Essentials courses.

Simply log in through the Member Portal to get started.

Julie’s advice for others in the industry

We’ve learnt that relationships, education, and a firm grip on emerging trends have fuelled Julie’s remarkable rise to the MRC’s top job. But what about the smaller stuff – the micro-habits, practiced on a day-to-day level, driving her successful path in payments?

“I don’t have email turned on on my phone,” says Julie, “I feel like we get hit from so many different directions, and different sources, and I’m easily distractible. So that helps.”

Julie’s second secret? Having a schedule – and one that begins at the crack of dawn. Julie (who’s based in Austin, Texas) later takes an hour off for a mid-morning breakfast, then half an hour for lunch. After that she works until around 3pm or 4pm – taking a brief breather to, in her words, “goof off” – before logging back in in the evening to cover developments in the Asia Pacific region. The following day, she’ll wake up at 4am to do it all again.

That strict schedule, Julie explains, is there to keep her accountable and add consistency and clarity to her day. “I love boundaries”, she says, “and having it all in the agenda makes it easy to stay on top of everything.”

Julie’s calendar isn’t without its humorous quirks , though – so, when booking a meeting, don’t be surprised to find time blocked out for a park visit or dog walk!

Asked for her top advice for others in the industry, Julie turns to the best piece of advice she’s ever received, and it’s refreshingly simple.

“Have fun, and work with people that you like,” Julie says. “And, if you’re not, go get a different job. Everything that happens at work influences your state of mind – whether you’re at work or not – so it’s vital that your professional environment is one you’re happy in.”

Wrapping up this conversation with Julie – whose disarming, authentic nature comes through in every sentence and smile – it’s clear that, at the MRC, she’s found just that. And that, through her dedication to bring sector-leading education to an emerging, exciting host of industry professionals, she’s opening the door for a whole new generation to gain that same happiness in their roles. Helping them find their path – and their passion – in payments, too.

‍

Read about the journey of other professionals, like Jeff Weiland from Bolt.