Carr, who has been spearheading the development and implementation of secure payments processing technologies over the past year, will continue to help advance data security through his appointment as Associate Member Director. The SPVA is a nonprofit organization comprised of payments industry leaders who work with multiple stakeholders in the payment value chain to develop an end-to-end security framework and enhance the security of payment solutions.

"I am honored to have been elected to the SPVA Board," said Carr. "I believe hardware solutions are required at the point of sale to take card numbers out of the clear as they are converted from analog data on a magnetic stripe to digits in computer systems. The SPVA Board is tasked with bringing POS hardware and software vendors together for the good of all of the stakeholders in the payments domain. I look forward to working with all of the members of SPVA to improve the payments infrastructure."

Heartland - one of the nation's largest payments processors - is enhancing payments security with its end-to-end encryption technology, E3TM. E3 is designed to safeguard sensitive information from the moment a card is swiped at a point-of-sale system, to and through Heartland's processing network, and ultimately to the card brands - rendering it useless in the event of a compromise.

Carr has also been a driving force in the formation of the Payments Processing Information Sharing Council (PPISC), a forum for sharing information about fraud, threats, vulnerabilities and risk mitigation practices in the payments industry. Carr is the chair of the PPISC steering committee.