Encrypting Billions: How Michael Keresman Made Cleveland the Epicenter of E-Commerce and Made Millions (Unabridged‪)‬

Bezos, Zuckerberg, or Musk: Will our modern tech entrepreneurs be remembered for their legacy like Carnegie, Ford, and Edison before them? What defines a technology legacy? Who is at the backbone of our digitized world today? An industry overseer, Digital Commerce 360 estimates that consumers spent $861.12 billion online with U.S. merchants in 2020, up an incredible 44 percent year over year. Truly a staggering sum to be sure. Most of us have forgotten how terrifying e-commerce was just a few years ago. Fraud and identity theft were rampant at the turn of the century in 1999. More importantly, Silicon Valley did not have the answers, either. That’s when Michael Keresman saw an opportunity to refine the digital payments process. Only his name or his company, CardinalCommerce may not sound familiar. It was Cardinal that initiated security protocols called “Intelligent Authentication", and then advanced over 100 patents for intellectual property that transformed e-commerce security. It was Cardinal’s software that gave rise to every tech entrepreneur’s success today! Because of Michael Keresman, the new epicenter for earth-shaking entrepreneurship for e-commerce shifted away from Silicon Valley to of all places Cleveland, Ohio, and CardinalCommerce. More importantly, the financial giants like Visa and Mastercard knew it, too. While Keresman may not be a household name to the likes of Bezos or Musk, to Visa he certainly was.