Donna Gem & Amanda Maddocks – A Dynamic Duo in Payments

Explaining the world of payment processing to most people can be daunting exercise, but my bright and curious young daughter was excited to learn, and quick to understand what it was all about starting at a very early age. This allowed us to have very special commonality and enhanced the bond between us that I will always be grateful for.

It all began at a small start-up payment processing company called “TransNet” located in Tampa, FL, and the first “Bring Your Child to Work Day.” Starting at the age of 8, my daughter Amanda would join me each year in my office to learn more about what her mother did all day while she was in school. She would be up early first thing in the morning ready to jump in my car and drive to my office together. It was a big deal because not only was she always excited to spend the day with me, but it didn’t hurt that on this date every year she had an excused absence from school.

TransNet was a small company at that time, and the data center was located right there in the same building as my office. The data center tour was the real highlight of Bring Your Child to Work Day. It was amazing to see the excitement on the kids’ faces as they watched all the bright flashing lights of the computers processing transactions. The Data Center Tour guide (our Data Center manager) would walk them through the aisles with all the big black cabinets and tell them about the transactions being processed from merchant to network, to card issuer, then back to the network, to authorize (or decline) all within 3 ½ seconds or less. Those kids were mesmerized.

In addition to the Bring Your Child to Work Day event, I know Amanda was also very proud to have her mother come to her classroom every year and participate in The Great American Teach-in. Each year in November, I would arrive at her classroom ready to go with my cool Tran 380 terminal, (in demo mode of course) and about 40 mag stripe test credit cards. Knowing I would have to compete against the firefighter parents who let all the kids sit in the cool fire engine, that Tran 380 became my very impressive prop for keeping the kids interested. The take home prize of the day was that every kid would have the opportunity to run their own test credit card transaction on the terminal, receive a real (test) credit card receipt and test card of their own to take home and show off to their parents.

I have been in the payments industry for nearly 30 years now. Initially I was recruited from E&Y to join a small processing company to reconcile encrypted debit card transactions. That was back in the old days when folks didn’t really have a clue what a debit card was. People referred to them as “ATM cards” (some still do). Since that time, I have evolved to be an Encryption & Key Management subject matter expert. Becoming very passionate about compliance and security, my focus throughout the years has been to help drive the encryption strategy and roadmap in the payments/fintech industry into the future. As a certified Information Security Manager, and TR39 (ANSI) Auditor, I provide guidance to internal teams at FIS on Payment Card Industry (PCI) requirements and card association mandates.

Amanda Maddocks, began her payments processing career at the young age of 19. Nearly 20 years later, she has evolved from an entry level Customer Service Help Desk Representative to hold various roles throughout her years in the payments business and is currently a manager and a Vice President at JPMorgan Chase.