look into the career of John "Jack" McDonnell Jr., Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Transaction Network Services Inc. (TNS), a subsidiary of TNS Inc., and a Founder of the Electronic Funds Transfer Association (EFTA), reveals many distinctive roles, all on the cutting edge.

In addition to entrepreneurship in the payments industry, he has worked as an engineer for the intelligence community, served as a lobbyist, and pioneered new technologies.

Describing himself as a "serial entrepreneur," McDonnell attributes his success, in part, to being involved with electronic payments since the industry's inception.

"I was very fortunate to get involved with data communications from the get-go," McDonnell said. "I came out [of grad school] with a masters degree in computer science, but you know, you could do a lot of things with that."

A "lot of things" are exactly what McDonnell did. After completing a graduate program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on the East Coast in 1960, he served as a Computer Engineer in the Air Force, working for the National Security Agency (NSA). He spent most of him time there building special purpose computers.

At the NSA he laid the foundations for his future career. "My final project there was probably the most interesting one," McDonnell said.

He was part of the team that set up the first encrypted data link between the Central Intelligence Agency and the NSA back in 1964. Today, TNS operates the world's largest, non-government, encrypted network for the investment banking industry.

"Once I got involved with the data communications project at NSA, I decided 'That is where I want to focus,'" McDonnell said.

We he left the Air Force, McDonnell kept his NSA ties and went to work for an electronics company selling into the intelligence community. It wasn't, however, to his liking. "I got tired of that in a hurry, and I ended up with two other fellows starting [our] own [electronics] company at the ripe old age of 28," McDonnell said.

The three men built a successful company, Computer Entry Systems, and eventually sold it.

After several years of working with electronics, computers, data transfer and communications, McDonnell returned to Washington, this time as a civilian. His new position was Director of Technology and Telecommunications for a presidential advisory commission on electronic funds transfer (EFT).

With the seeds of the latest technological explosion having been sown over the last decade, Congress was interested in its potential uses in banking. A newly formed commission had been put in place to study the potential impact of electronic banking and the move away from paper to paperless transactions.

"The vision was the checkless society," and Congress wanted to know "Is everything going to go electronic?" McDonnell said.

"I had a good technical background. I [had] been with IBM; I was very well versed in computers and data communications, so that's kind of how I got the appointment. That was my introduction to the banking business. Basically since then, I have been applying my knowledge of data communications in support of the electronic payment space."

During the two years of the commission, McDonnell received a great deal of exposure by testifying at many public hearings on the issue of electronic banking. "I was actually recruited pretty heavily after the commission," he said. "I had some interesting job offers. American Express wanted me to move to Phoenix and take over their network for electronic transactions. I ended up going with Timenet in Cupertino, California."

Because Timenet's focus was on electronic transactions at the point of sale (POS), McDonnell's first project was to set up 10,000 different merchants with dial-up credit card terminals, in conjunction with Wells Fargo & Co.'s merchant services division.

"I was there at the very beginning of the deployment of electronic terminals to automate the processing of cards at the POS," McDonnell said.

Crude by today's standards of sleek technological design, the terminals worked, and they worked well. The terminal manufacturer "literally bought ITT [International Telegraph and Telephone] phones, which looked like the old ATT [American Telephone and Telegraph] black telephones; you could drop them off a 10-story building, and they wouldn't break ... All they did was take out the guts and put in the electronics and then literally bolt a card swipe to the front of the phone."

In the mid-1980s, McDonnell received an interesting offer. The Electronic Industries Association invited him to head the federal lobbying branch of its telecommunications division. For the next three years he lobbied the federal government on behalf of the telecommunications industry. This was at the height of the telecom war between AT&T and the "baby Bells."

"I [had] been spending my life on a 747. I ended up setting up Timenet's international operations, so I was going all over Hong Kong, Europe [etc.], and my kids were still in high school. He thought "Maybe taking three years off in a Washington-based job [he lives in Virginia], with very little travel isn't really a bad idea."

"I got to testify before Congress five times; there's not too many people walking around that can say that."

His previous experience on the EFT commission didn't hurt either. "Our concern was that foreign markets were not open to us, and the U.S. was wide open," he said.

"All of the overseas manufacturers were invading the U.S. Our beef was that all these guys were operating from protected bases where they had guaranteed markets, and they were coming in, basically being subsidized by foreign governments ... wreaking havoc on the U.S. telecom manufacturers."

McDonnell was also appointed to a trade representative organization set up by the Department of Commerce. He helped negotiate the opening of the German and Japanese markets.

"So I actually played an active role during that three-year period in negotiating the opening up of the telecom markets in some of these foreign countries," McDonnell said. "And today I am taking advantage of that because I could not operate in these countries if they did not permit telecommunications [companies from doing business there]."

The high point of his lobbying stint came during his last senate hearing. Knowing that he would not face the senate again, he gave what he describes as "my most vitriolic testimony. I was leaving, and I didn't have to hold anything back, and [Senator Ed Markey] said, 'When the movie is made about the telecom bill, we're going to have to bring Jimmy Cagney back to life to play Jack McDonnell.'"

Although he was offered another three-year stint as a lobbyist, McDonnell decided he was done with the political circus and went back to private industry. In 1989, he joined Digital Radio Networks (DRN), a division of Citicorp, to build a wireless credit transaction network.

"It was an interesting concept, but unfortunately ahead of its time," McDonnell said. "Back in the late eighties the banks were concerned that [wireless] wasn't secure; they didn't want credit card numbers ... being sent through the air. I refer to it as a technological marvel and a marketing disaster."

So the world was not yet ready for wireless. Jack, though, figured out how to increase the speed of dial-up transactions from 20 - 40 seconds, down to 10. He found a supporter in Bill Melton, the founder of VeriFone Inc.

"I convinced Bill that if I could build this faster network, he could sell more terminals because we could open it up to applications that wouldn't take credit cards because they were too slow," McDonnell said.

Melton gave McDonnell $1.5 million to start a network. That was in 1990. TNS became operational in 1991, and the rest is history.

TNS provides business-critical data communications services to processors of credit card, debit card and ATM transactions. It also provides secure data and voice network services to the global financial services industry.

The public company has built a global POS network, which processes millions of transactions every day. The network operates from Australia to Tokyo, Europe to Canada, the United States and Latin America. TNS has also recently begun providing services in Poland and wants to expand throughout the former Eastern Bloc.

"We're the only network that actually gets in the middle of the application," McDonnell said. "What makes us unique, and what makes our customers really appreciate us is we built the network to track the transaction, from the minute it left the terminal until the final acknowledgement was received back from the host system. All the other carriers just want to give you a phone line and say, 'You figure out what to do with it.'"

After 30 years, the electronic transactions industry, with its ever-changing technologies and applications, still has not lost its luster for McDonnell. It "was a great decision as well ... to go on to the EFT commission, which exposed me to this whole electronic payment world," McDonnell said.

There has also been a great continuity among industry veterans. "There's always new people coming in, but I'm still doing business with people that I've worked with [for] 20 years ... There's a lot of people like me around," McDonnell said.

One does not remain at the top of his or her field for 30 years without a work ethic and style that both co-workers and customers appreciate. McDonnell describes himself as being involved with all aspects of his business.

"People would say that I get very involved, so you have to differentiate between that and micromanagement," he said. "I want to know what's going on. I think that it's easy to become detached and sit in your office and just deal with the press, but I think that's a mistake."

Heidi Goff is TNS' Executive Vice President and General Manager for the POS Division. "I met Jack in 1988, before he started TNS," Goff said. "I've watched him through the startup of TNS, while he put together the team."

McDonnell struck a positive chord with Goff from the beginning. "I remember meeting Jack and really enjoying his energy; he's very focused on what he does, he's very smart, he's very visionary," she said. "He's an intense guy. He's done a hell of a lot. I'll tell you that what he's done in Europe for TNS is nothing short of startling."

The future of the electronic payments business, McDonnell said, is wide open, especially "when you go overseas, as you move into some of these emerging countries where plastic is just becoming a reality."

"What I think is fun is going to these countries and feeling that this is exactly where the U.S. was back in 1984," McDonnell said. "I am delighted that people are coming up with new opportunities every day to use plastic, such as loyalty cards. These are all interesting innovations and they all generate transactions."