The Clearing House Chief Executive Officer David Watson has been remaking the bank-owned company’s executive suite with outsiders since landing at the company in February.
On Monday, The Clearing House appointed Sal Karakaplan as the company’s new chief strategy officer. Karakaplan was formerly at Truist Financial, where he was executive vice president of that bank’s enterprise payments group and helped establish that bank’s “payments vision,” TCH said in a press release. He also previously held executive payments titles at JPMorgan Chase and Mastercard, the release said.
Karakaplan’s experience in payments and banking will help TCH chart “new ways to work with partners to enhance existing products and create innovative offerings for our customers,” Watson said in the release. This is the company’s first chief strategy officer, a TCH spokesperson said.
Since taking TCH’s top post in February, Watson has made quick work of an executive suite overhaul at the payments entity that clears and settles some $2 trillion each day through wire, ACH, check image and real-time payments networks. The leadership shift comes as TCH faces new competition from the Federal Reserve’s recently launched FedNow real-time payments system, which will take on TCH’s private RTP network.
Last month, TCH named Keith Melton, formerly a senior vice president heading up product management at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, as an SVP and strategic program manager for RTP.
TCH also hired Margaret Weichert as chief product officer in October. Mostly recently, Weichert had been the North America payments lead at the big consulting firm Accenture, but she had also worked for the federal government, as deputy director for management in the Office of Management and Budget.
Sheffali Welch became TCH’s chief operating officer in August, bringing on board a resume full of banking experience, including at BNY Mellon, Deutsche Bank and Citibank, according to her LinkedIn profile.
