New Payments Leadership Marks Significant Milestone in Mercator Advisory Group Transition to Javelin
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., October 20, 2022 — Javelin Strategy & Research is pleased to announce it has named Brian Riley and James Wester as co-heads of Payments, following the successful integration of Mercator Advisory Group and Javelin.
In March 2022, Escalent—Javelin’s parent company—acquired Mercator, a trusted research and advisory firm that serves the global payments industry, to augment Javelin’s payments practice and create a thought leadership powerhouse. Over the past seven months, the companies have been working hand-in-hand to create fully integrated, industry-leading payments advisory services to support clients’ ever-expanding payments needs. The integrated payments offering incorporates and retains all Mercator and Javelin Payments practices.
Brian Riley has served as director of Mercator’s credit advisory service for six years. He will assume an expanded role and oversee the team leading the Debit, Prepaid, and Commercial practices. Riley has spent a quarter of a century with top-tier national credit card issuers at Chase, Citi, HFC, and Wachovia (First Union National Bank) in senior management credit policy, operations, and system design functions with an emphasis on applying scoring and technology solutions to acquisition, credit, collection, and fraud.
James Wester currently serves as director of Javelin’s Cryptocurrency practice. He will now also oversee the team leading the Merchant, Technology & Infrastructure (formerly Javelin Payments), and Emerging Payments practices. Wester has more than two decades of experience in research, marketing, and communications in payments and technology, including supporting PayPal’s blockchain, crypto, and digital currencies business unit as well as IDC Financial Insights’ worldwide blockchain and payment strategies practices. Wester has been widely quoted in the media including The New York Times, Marketplace (NPR), The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, and Good Morning America.
“Throughout the integration, our payments industry analysts have been exclusively focused on providing clients with an unmatched level of service while turning our vision to craft a payments advisory and thought leadership powerhouse into reality,” said Jacob Jegher, president of Javelin Strategy & Research. “Brian and James are incredibly talented. Naming them as co-heads of Payments is the beginning of great things to come as we expand and invest in advising our clients on navigating the payments and financial services ecosystem.”
The payments team also hired Christopher Miller as lead analyst in the Emerging Payments practice. Miller has spent the last 10+ years exploring the impact of emerging technologies across financial services, most recently with Northwestern Mutual where he was the director of strategic partnerships on the corporate strategy team and led efforts to improve NM's client payment experiences and develop banking partnerships. Daniel Keyes was promoted to senior analyst and will lead the Merchant practice covering the technologies behind the merchant acceptance of payments. Both Keyes and Miller will report into Wester.
Meet Jegher, Wester, Keyes, and several other Javelin and Mercator analysts at Money 20/20 in Las Vegas, starting October 23. Contact inquiry@javelinstrategy.com to book an on-site meeting.
About Javelin Strategy & Research
Javelin Strategy & Research, part of the Escalent family, helps its clients make informed decisions in a digital financial world. It provides strategic insights to financial institutions, including banks, credit unions, brokerages and insurers, as well as payments companies, technology providers, fintechs, and government agencies. Javelin’s independent insights result from a rigorous research process that assesses consumers, businesses, providers, and the transactions ecosystem. It conducts in-depth primary research studies to pinpoint dynamic risks and opportunities in digital banking, payments, fraud & security, lending, and wealth management. For more information, visit javelinstrategy.com. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
About Mercator Advisory Group
Mercator Advisory Group is the leading, independent research and advisory services firm exclusively focused on the payments and banking industries. It delivers pragmatic and timely research and advice to help clients uncover the most lucrative opportunities to maximize revenue growth and contain costs. Its clients range from the world’s largest payment issuers, acquirers, processors, merchants and associations to leading technology providers and investors. Mercator Advisory Group is also the publisher of the online payments and banking news and information portal PaymentsJournal.com.
###
Media Contact
Tejas Puranik
tejas.puranik@javelinstrategy.com
