Shift4 is the future of commerce, transforming the way people accept and make payments. At the center of this fintech organization is Michael Russo, chief technology officer (CTO), who is responsible for all payment platform, merchant and outward facing technologies, and vertical solutions such as venue and restaurant platforms. Under his leadership, his team brings cutting-edge solutions to market by staying true to one of the company’s core values.
“One of our core philosophies is to remove the parts in anything and everything we do,” Russo says. By “removing the parts,” the CTO means finding ways to simplify the varying degrees of complexity his team deals with on a daily basis.
That mentality has helped the Shift4 power billions of transactions each year with its processing and point-of-sale services for businesses across several industries. Recently, Russo’s team has been on that work with a new online payments platform designed to propel both large internet and brick-and-mortar businesses worldwide. It has advanced developer tools geared toward supporting businesses of various sizes. The platform allows users to create customizable checkout forms, backs a wide range of payment scenarios, and more.
In a press release, Russo noted the platform “delivers a truly unmatched solution that can support the largest and most complex e-commerce merchants around the world. Built by developers for developers, our platform enables seamless web and mobile payments with a simple and flexible integration, powerful management tools and the highest level of security.”
Leadership that Pays Off
“You want to be a leader, not a manager,” says Michael Russo when asked about what it takes to strategically guide a strong team. “When you put teams together, your job is to empower them to get them signed up and to help them understand what we’re trying to achieve. Since our agile teams drive the work, they need to be really inspired. To do that, start with the end point in mind. If people don’t understand what that is, you’ll never get there. Start there, and along the way, get the teams feeling like they own what they’re doing and that they can do what it takes without someone breathing down their neck, micromanaging them.”
Shift4, which started in 1999 as United Bank Card, is also expanding its capabilities in other ways, particularly through several acquisitions. By acquiring Finaro, a cross-border e-commerce payments acquirer and processor provider with a large European presence, and the Giving Block, which specializes in cryptocurrency fundraising for nonprofits, Shift4 will accelerate growth globally while paving the way to cryptocurrency enablement and nonprofit opportunities. Recently, the company also acquired a company in Poland that excels at operating internet payments.
“During the due diligence for these M&As [mergers and acquisitions], we not only look for what these solutions could do for our business today but how we can parlay that into making the overall Shift4 solution best-in-class,” Russo says. “Already they’ve helped us get new customers, get some pretty cool capabilities in Europe, and onboard state-of-the-art ISVs [independent software vendors] and merchants to the family.”
The technology services vendors that Russo works with speak highly of his abilities in these areas. “Mike epitomizes creativity and innovation when it comes to transforming organizations, may it be with his teams or his partners,” says Harsha Liyanage of Virtusa Corporation. “Although he leads with technology, business outcomes have always been his sole focus.”
It isn’t always easy to “remove the parts” amid M&A cycles and their implications, Russo admits. “You’re taking another company and bringing in ‘extra parts’ and integrating them, whether that be through sales processes, technology, or how you support it all.”
But Russo’s process to helping his team align with the company’s ambitious growth goals starts with an empowering leadership style and an ability to keep the end goal in mind. He’s seen the latter approach not only work wonders in his decades-long career, but also on the products he’s had the chance to develop.
That wisdom even extends to a side project he worked on for thirteen years. “I was developing a 1/8th-size steam locomotive and made sure to keep the blueprints up on the wall, constantly reminding myself that, ‘This is where I’m going, and here is how [these] twenty hours I spend on this little part fits into the whole,’” he says. “If you don’t do that, you drive yourself crazy.”
He started his career that way: with an end goal in mind. After graduating from California State University, Long Beach with a chemical engineering degree (with emphasis on software development), Russo was working at a company that built oil refineries when he caught the entrepreneurial bug.
“During the due diligence for these M&As, we not only look for what these solutions could do for our business today but how we can parlay that into making the overall Shift4 solution best-in-class.”
Michael Russo
“After a year and a half, leaders thought I’d be good for a marketing and sales role for creating new software to make refinery operations more efficient. Those experiences made me want to start my own software company,” he recalls. “As an engineer, I realized I needed to get experience in areas I didn’t have, like how to run support and deployment organizations, how to build engineering teams from scratch, and a training team.”
For the next four years, Russo decided to take jobs that matched what he needed to know as a company leader. “Some people thought I was kind of crazy for wanting to go in and do some of those jobs, but it was a stepping stone for me and I spent years getting those experiences to reach my end point,” he reflects. “I thought I needed to understand enough about the whole big picture to make that happen.”
In 1994, Russo cofounded a healthcare-focused software company. When the company was sold in 2000, he developed a new end goal that he brought to several companies and most recently to Shift4 in 2018. “Today, my endgame is seeing new products and capabilities hit the market,” he says. “I’ve been very lucky in my career because I’ve always been given new opportunities to do that and that’s rewarding.”
PAX Technology, Inc. is one of the largest electronic payment solution providers in the world, with 60 million terminals located in over 120 countries. As a leading global manufacturer of payment solutions, we are committed to delivering innovative, high-quality, and secure payment solutions to businesses, large and small, worldwide.
Virtusa Corporation is a global provider of digital engineering and technology services and solutions for Forbes Global 2000 companies in the financial services, healthcare, communications, media, entertainment, travel, manufacturing, and technology industries worldwide. At Virtusa, digital engineering is at the heart of everything we do. We are 35,000 builders, makers, and doers that partner with customers to reimagine enterprises and creatively build solutions to the most pressing business challenges that move them to the forefront of their industries. Virtusa’s unique “Engineering First” approach means never presenting an idea we can’t execute. With deep industry expertise and empowered agile teams made up of world-class talent, we think about execution early in the process, because the earlier you think about execution the earlier an idea can have an impact. Solving from the inside out enables businesses to respond swiftly to changing needs with improved quality, lower costs, and lasting results.
