Jim Higgins is an Affiliate Director of Lumen specializing in payment ecosystem consultancy and litigation support focused on data security, credit card and next-gen payment industry sectors. He has expert knowledge of the payments industry in the issuing and acquisition payment sector including debit, credit, prepaid, gift, and loyalty cards. He has served as an expert witness in four federal trials.

Over the course of his career he has served a consultant in data security related to PCI-DSS, payment breaches and cybersecurity issues as well as an executive launching credit card, debit card and prepaid product lines. Mr. Higgins has broad experience in data protection and breach protocols as well as breach prevention and mitigation. Prior to consulting, he was VP of Payments & Financial Services for the National Restaurant Association representing restaurant industry interests to Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, PayPal, and other payment industry firms. He also re-launched prepaid card programs for US Bank’s Kroger Card and was Director of Pre-Paid Cards at Wal-Mart. Prior to this, he was Vice President of Card & Payment Products for Fifth Third Bank. Mr. Higgins was also senior manager of acquiring products for FTPS (now Vantiv) and Operations and IT Manager for Discover Card.

Mr. Higgins’ recent work has focused on next-generation banking and payment products, cybersecurity, breach prevention and mitigation, mobile banking, mobile payments, POS and eCommerce security.