Dan Stiel has spent more than four decades at the intersection of financial services, retail, and technology — not as an observer, but as the person in the room when the decisions got made.
He started as a marketing intern at Bank of America while studying at USC’s Marshall School of Business. What followed was a career that tracked the entire arc of modern payments: from the early days of ATMs and debit cards through the rise of prepaid, mobile, and embedded financial services.
Along the way, Dan held leadership roles at First Interstate Bancorp, Visa, Circle K/Couche-Tard, and Xerox Services — building and running payment products used by tens of millions of consumers across thousands of retail locations nationwide.
A Track Record of Firsts
Dan has been the marketing or product lead on some of the payments industry’s most consequential launches — many of them industry firsts:
- Interlink POS & Cirrus ATM networks — among the earliest national debit and ATM networks, launched at First Interstate Bancorp
- Visa Debit Cards — First Interstate Bancorp was first to market in California under Dan’s leadership
- Pay-at-the-Pump — deployed at UNOCAL and Circle K as it became the industry standard
- Prepaid Debit Mastercard — launched for Circle K and Xerox, reaching 20M+ cardholders
- MVNO/Prepaid Cellular — one of the first retailers to offer branded prepaid phone programs, at Circle K
- Self-Serve Bill Pay Kiosks — embedded financial services inside convenience retail, years before it became common
- GPS-Based Mobile Ordering & Mobile POS — an early pioneer in location-aware mobile commerce
- Co-brand & Private-Label Credit Cards — across UNOCAL, First Interstate, Tosco, and Circle K
These weren’t incremental improvements. They were category-defining moves that shaped how Americans pay for things today.
Building Something of His Own
In 2000, Dan founded Stiel Direct LLC — a payments-focused marketing and product development firm that grew to a nine-person team managing thousands of campaigns and projects for Fortune 100 clients including Citibank, Circle K, BP, Chrysler Financial, ConocoPhillips, Motorola, and key Walmart vendors. The firm operated from offices in Scottsdale, New York, Bentonville, and Irvine.
After retiring from corporate life in 2017, Dan shifted to selective advisory and consulting work under the Nevo Financial and Abetica Studios banners — engaging with clients in payments, AI, real estate, retail, and financial services who need senior-level expertise without a full-time hire.
Beyond Payments
Dan is also an FAA-certified commercial drone pilot, a California licensed commercial real estate broker, a PMP-certified project manager, and an Adjunct Professor at College of the Desert, where he teaches commercial photography and drone imaging. He pursues professional digital imaging through Abetica Studios, the design firm he founded in 2006.
Work With Dan
Dan is available for select C-Suite consulting, board advisory, and interim leadership engagements. If you’re facing a challenge in payments strategy, product development, or financial services marketing — and want someone who’s actually built these systems before — get in touch.
For more information about Nevo Financial, contact Dan personally at (512) 887-8435.
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