Brad Wiskirchen, 2019 Icon

Brad Wiskirchen

In a few short years, Kount went from an idea discussed at a Boise sushi bar on Vista Avenue to a worldwide leader in the online fraud prevention and protection industry. Today, more than 6,500 companies worldwide depend on Kount, which has headquarters in downtown Boise.

Deftly handling online transactions in more than 180 countries, Kount provides fraud control solutions. Its clients include Staples, Crate and Barrel, Chase and PetSmart.

Kount founder CEO Brad Wiskirchen did not begin his career as a technology entrepreneur and visionary. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame Law School with a Juris Doctorate in 1996.

After law school, Wiskirchen became a partner with Holland & Hart in Boise, where he represented some of Idaho’s largest publicly and privately held technology companies. He then launched himself from a successful and secure law career into an entrepreneurial corporate executive role on the world’s stage, relying on his life to uncover opportunities.

“If you leverage open, honest and fearless communications, you will find opportunities early on,” says Wiskirchen. “Innovation can evolve from an idea to a worldwide, industry-leading technology in a matter of months with this philosophy. Your team will rally around the opportunity to innovate and fight tirelessly to ensure that the idea becomes a viable business.”

He further says that, “People will fill vacuums of information with misinformation. As a leader, I believe it is essential to tell employees what’s going on with the company. Team members know that they will hear any news, good or bad, from me first. Team members then know that they are respected and entrusted with valuable information.”

Mark A. Gould, first VP and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, recommended Wiskirchen as an Idaho Business Review Icon.

“Brad has excelled in business,” Gould writes. “He has done so in a way that has created incredible opportunity for others, transformed how payments are executed, and boosted growth in the Idaho economy while still making time to give back to important causes.”

Rob Cameron, CEO at Barclays, also recommended Wiskirchen.

“His ability to link client needs to the right solution has helped the companies he has worked with and Kount grow … they have taken a complex problem of fraud in e-commerce and made it simple for clients to implement and take action,” Cameron writes. “Kount not only helps its clients stop fraud but also understand how to let more good transactions complete successfully — protecting them from loss while actually  growing their revenues.”

Wiskirchen’s employees also think of him highly and say they learned a lot under his guidance.

“I learned from Brad to plan and chart my course,” says Sean Desruisseaux, Kount group product manager. “Be intentional with my time and relationships.”

Career

Brad Wiskirchen is the founding CEO at Kount, the premier fraud prevention solution for card-not-present transactions. Kount protects many of the world’s largest card-not-present merchants and some of the largest acquiring banks and payment platforms. Prior to December 2015, Wiskirchen was also CEO of Keynetics and executive chairman of ClickBank. He began his career as an attorney and became one of the youngest partners at the time at Holland and Hart in Boise. Moving out of law into corporate executive leadership represented a career milestone.

Accomplishments

Graduated from Notre Dame Law School

Member of the International Monetary Fund High-Level Advisory Group, 2017-present

Chairman of the Board, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Salt Lake City Branch, 2014-16

Former CEO of Keynetics and executive chairman of ClickBank

Founded Kount