The first mark John Priore’s company made on the world came from his daughter. Erica designed Priority’s original logo in 2005, introducing the check mark that became part of its identity. For a business concerned with getting transactions approved, it was an economical choice of symbol. An entire industry’s desired outcome, expressed with a flick of the wrist.
Her father took on the longer assignment. Priore became Priority’s chief executive in August of that year and stayed in the job until December 2018. The company began with six founders, grew through software and acquisitions, and entered the public markets during his final year as CEO. He remained involved at board level until April 2025.
There is a pleasing tension in that history. The logo gives the business a family beginning. The work behind it concerns millions of decidedly impersonal exchanges: cards accepted, payments processed, merchants served. Priore’s career sits between those two scales, where a relationship has to survive becoming an operation.
A check mark with a family history
In his introduction to Priority’s 2017 brand guide, Priore placed payment convenience alongside familiar innovations, including electricity, refrigeration and indoor plumbing. The comparison had a practical point. People use essential systems without spending much time admiring them. He singled out “the ease in which we pay” as something people take for granted.
It is an amusing ambition for a technology executive: build something people can happily ignore. The merchant does not need a philosophical encounter with a payment terminal. The customer would like to leave with the purchase. Success can look remarkably like nothing happening.
That framing helps explain the subject Priore chose for his working life. Payments demand attention precisely so that the person paying can give them very little. Behind a routine approval sits a business of technology, support and relationships. His introduction connected the brand’s evolution to its products and to the partners using them. Erica’s check mark supplied a compact public face for that complicated arrangement.
“the ease in which we pay”
John Priore · Priority brand guide, 2017
The apprenticeship before the startup
Priore came to the founding table with an established payments career. He had worked at American Express, First Data and NOVA before serving as executive vice president of Financial Systems at Ingenico. Those names put him inside an industry that already had its own infrastructure, customers and ways of doing business.
His education followed a different vocabulary. He is a University of Rhode Island alumnus from the class of 1987, with a bachelor’s degree in communications. His subsequent career took him into financial systems and executive management. The degree and the job titles make an interesting pairing in a field where explaining a service and delivering it must eventually meet.
Priority was therefore a company founded with operating experience already in the room. Priore had worked within organizations that handled different parts of the payment business. Starting another company meant becoming responsible for how the pieces would fit together, as well as for the people who would sell and support the result.
Priore pictured in a 2014 Priority feature published by CIOReview.
Six founders, two sides of the counter
John and his brother Thomas were part of a six-person founding group. Richard Harris, Sean Kiewiet, Sheila Hernandez and Duayne Haskett were the other founders. Keeping all six names in view gives the beginning its proper proportions. Even a story about one executive needs enough chairs around the table.
The business also had to serve people beyond the merchant accepting a card. Priority worked through independent sales organizations and other distribution partners. Those partners brought payment services to businesses; Priority supplied the processing and tools behind them. A company operating through intermediaries has several relationships to look after at once.
Consider the two sides of that arrangement. Merchants need payments to work within their business. Sales partners need an offering they can explain, establish and continue to support. Technology can help both, but the two groups do different jobs. Priore’s company built around that distinction rather than treating every user as the same customer with a different password.
In April 2012, he appeared on Buckingham Business Review with members of Priority’s management team. The appearance provides a small public glimpse of the operating group during those years. By 2013, Priority had received the Electronic Transactions Association’s ISO of the Year award.
The merger that changed the arithmetic
In 2014, Priority combined with Cynergy Data. The resulting business served approximately 125,000 merchant clients and processed about $20 billion annually. John continued as president and CEO; Tom served as chairman. Afshin Yazdian, Cynergy’s chief executive, took responsibility for integration as executive director.
The division of responsibilities matters. A merger creates a larger number on a presentation slide immediately. It also creates work that refuses to fit inside that number. Customers, processing arrangements and teams have to function together. Priore remained responsible for the combined organization while integration had its own designated leader.
Expansion continued the following year. Priority bought Huntington, New York-based American Credit Card Processing Corporation in July 2015. The deal added more than 9,000 merchant accounts generating roughly $2 billion in annual charge volume. ACCPC also had offices in Florida, Texas and Washington.
Priore described the acquisition as extending Priority into attractive geographic regions and merchant categories. ACCPC president Mike Murray pointed to Priority’s MX technology as a factor in joining. The transaction brought customers and sales relationships; the software gave the incoming business something it wanted to use. Growth, in this example, had a reason on both sides of the agreement.
Software gives the relationship somewhere to live
During Priore’s CEO tenure, Priority developed tools for the different participants in its network. MX Merchant provided payment and business applications for merchants. MX Connect supported resellers with tasks including onboarding, servicing and commission processing. CPX addressed business-to-business payments.
The product names sound like labels on neighboring office doors. The underlying distinction is useful: accepting a customer’s payment, managing a portfolio of merchants and paying a supplier are different jobs. Giving each a working system creates more opportunities to serve the businesses already connected to the network.
Actual bankcard processing volume rose from $27.2 billion in 2015 to $34.7 billion in 2017. That is a company measure, reflecting the work of its teams and partners during Priore’s leadership. It gives the period a concrete scale without pretending that a CEO personally processes a card.
In August 2018, Priority acquired PPS Tech Partners, an Arizona business that had operated as one of its branded offices. Priore emphasized integrated payments and business-to-business opportunities. Eric Frazier joined as chief business development officer. Once again, the company was buying a business it already knew, while attaching a specific leadership responsibility to the next stage.
When the brothers changed seats
Priority entered the public markets in 2018. Later that year, the brothers changed responsibilities: Tom became CEO, and John moved to vice chairman. The November announcement placed the transition alongside a broader expansion of the management team, including the appointment of Michael Vollkommer as chief financial officer.
Tom connected his new role to the investment community, new business lines and the demands of a public company. John’s assignment would emphasize marketplace relationships. His brother described that work as an area where John had shown “a passion and natural talent.” It was a specific account of what the company wanted him to keep contributing.
Titles can flatten a career into a series of replacements. This transition is more revealing when read as a division of work. John had led the business from its early years. The next arrangement put his relationship experience into a different role while Tom took executive responsibility.
John served as vice chairman through March 2021 and continued as a director afterward. Leaving the CEO’s chair in 2018 began a change in his involvement. It would be several more years before he left the board.
Twenty years, and a different seat
On February 27, 2025, Priority announced his planned board retirement, effective April 1. Clayton Main would join the board on the same date. Twenty years after the founding year, the company was making room for another director with a different professional history.
Priore’s farewell expressed satisfaction at having participated in Priority’s development from startup to public company, and optimism about what it could accomplish next. He also looked ahead personally: “While I look forward to my future,” he said, before turning his attention back to the business. Tom thanked him for their years building it together.
The story now has a clear span. A payments executive helped start a company, ran it for thirteen years, stayed through a longer board chapter and eventually stepped away. Along the way came other founders, managers, partners, acquisitions and merchants. The company could grow because responsibility could be shared and, eventually, reassigned.
At the beginning sits Erica’s check mark. It remains a useful way into her father’s work: a simple sign for an outcome that requires a great deal of organization. Most customers will never think about the people behind an approved payment. Priore spent a substantial part of his career helping make that an entirely reasonable habit.