Mel Ora
Chairman & CEO
Upon his discharge from the Navy in 1968, Mel began his career in banking at Second National Bank in their data processing department. In 1970, Mel joined Financial Computer Services, a bank service bureau, which offered data processing services to over fifty-five banks, twelve S & L’s, and eight Credit Unions. Mel started his career with FCS as a customer liaison, and then worked as a programmer and systems analyst.
In 1974, Mel joined Payment Systems, Inc. and relocated to Wilmington, Delaware where he developed and managed the first successful debit card system in the United States.
In 1975, Mel was part of a team that developed a strategic business plan for the deployment of a national debit card system for American Express. In 1978, Mel formed his own consulting business specializing in back room automation, ATM Systems and check truncation system design.
In 1980, Mel traveled to Taiwan where he participated in the development of a strategic plan for the implementation of a national debit card system.
Mel moved his family and consulting business to Clearwater, Florida in 1981. A year later he rejoined his colleagues at Payment Systems, Inc. as a Senior Vice President of Consulting Services. Mel traveled extensively throughout the U.S. and Canada doing consulting projects for companies such as Citibank, AT&T, as well as other major financial services companies.
In 1990, Mel helped form Consumer Payment Services, Inc. which developed and marketed one of the first consumer bill payment services in the U.S. In 1992, Mel formed Merchant Payment Services, Inc. (MPS), an independent third party marketing company, which operated in 37 states offering electronic credit card services and equipment. MPS had over 500 independent agents and at its peak opened over 650 new merchant accounts per month.
In 1995, MPS was sold and Mel formed another company that was also involved in the credit card processing industry. The new company grew to the same proportions as MPS and in February, 1998 the company was acquired by PMT Services, INC., a public company in the same industry.
Harry Johnson
President
Harry has more than 25 years’ experience in the electronic payment processing industry. Harry has influenced many sales of large national Chains in the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) Industry and also created complex processing relationships with value add technology partners; providing leveraged leading edge technology solutions to checXchange™ customers.
After graduating from Texas A&M and spending several years as a software developer, Harry began his career in merchant services at Paymentech in 1987 as Vice President of Systems and Technology where he supervised the computer operations and development teams. He directed the company’s technology operations, which encompassed computer operations, telecommunications, programming and systems design and development. Harry also held management positions in Client Relations and also created and managed the Project Management team.
Harry built and managed the Technical Sales Support and VAR certification departments at Paymentech. Capitalizing on his success in Sales Support, Harry migrated to National Sales where he enjoyed success as the company’s top ranking salesman in selling to Fortune 500 Companies and businesses processing greater than $100M in annual sales.
Harry joined MTSI in November 2005 as Sr. VP of Sales and Marketing. Leveraging his National account sales experience, Harry helped MTSI close many large merchant accounts in the Tampa Bay market. Harry used his past experience in creating and managing payment processing systems to help launch the checXchange™ processing service under the MTSI corporate umbrella.
Craig Metz
Sr. VP Operations
After earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from Middle Tennessee State University, Craig began his experience in the technology sector in 1996 as an Account Manager and then Channel Account Manager for Cisco Systems, Inc. where he was responsible for managing channel partners in Tennessee and Alabama.
Upon leaving Cisco, Craig joined Diversified Computer Solutions (Nashville, TN) as Vice President. At Diversified Computer Solutions Craig designed local and wide area networks for small businesses to large corporations and served as a liaison to strategic partners and manufacturers.
Craig left Diversified Computer Solutions and founded NetChecks in 2000, an e-commerce transaction processing provider. Craig managed and marketed electronic check solutions to internet merchants.
In 2001, Craig became the Chief Technology Officer for CheckVelocity (Nashville, TN). At CheckVelocity, Craig was directly responsible for the secure transmission of all electronic transactions through the ACH network while supervising all internal merchant databases. During his tenure at CheckVelocity, Craig developed extensive experience with NSF checks processing. In addition, as CTO, Craig was responsible for managing the corporate network, web, and mail server as well as overseeing all new product development and testing.
Craig joined MTSI in mid-2007, and has over eleven (11) years’ experience heading up NSF check recovery for businesses and banks.