CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Mike Urban, a founding director of Card Alert Services, has won the ATM Industry Association's Most Influential Member Award for 2004 for his work in supplying members worldwide with regular fraud alerts.
Card Alert Services is now owned by Fair Isaac Corporation, a risk management service specializing in counterfeit card fraud detection and control. Urban introduced fraud alerts, which are sent to more than 500 ATMIA members in 20 countries, and also played a decisive role in the early stages of the formation of the Global ATM Security Alliance.
Urban and five other ATMIA members were nominees in this year's global search for the member with the most influence. The aim of the award, said Mike Lee, ATMIA's international director, is to recognize those who influence both the association and the industry in positive ways.
"Every industry has its influencers, those who manage to raise the bar of performance in their industries through positive achievements," Lee said. "Mike Urban and the other five nominees played constructive roles in building up the ATM industry and ATMIA."
This year's runner-up was Steve Kark, managing director of ATM Solutions in South Africa, the country's first independent ATM deployer. Kark is also a founding board member and key player in the formation of ATMIA Africa.
Second runner-up was Sandra Hartfield, president of the Electronic Banking division of Palm Desert National Bank. Hartfield helped establish best practices for sponsoring financial institutions in the United States and exerted positive influence on policy makers in California who were developing legislation which in its original format would have been disadvantageous to the retail ATM industry.
