May 27, 1931 – April 3, 2020
Arthur B. Ziegler was present at the birth of what now is MasterCard.
It took place in the Buffalo Club on Aug. 16, 1966, when Karl H. Hinke, who launched a Marine Midland Bank credit card across New York State, convened executives from 17 banks to establish the InterBank Card Association, a universal credit card system to challenge the Bank of America, which that year had taken its BankAmericard nationwide.
Mr. Ziegler, an executive at Marine Midland, was there as a bank representative.
Within nine months, 450 banks in 21 states joined InterBank. The InterBank Card evolved into MasterCharge and later MasterCard, surpassing BankAmericard, which now is Visa.
Mr. Ziegler went on to serve on the board of directors of MasterCard. He played a key role in linking it with the leading credit card companies in Europe and in developing the gold and corporate cards.
He died April 3 in Beechwood Homes, Getzville, after a short illness. He was 88.
Born in Syracuse, the oldest of three children of a Methodist minister, he was an Eagle Scout and a 1948 graduate of Onondaga Valley Academy, where he was president of the International Relations Club.
He attended Syracuse University and worked at an Acme market, becoming an assistant department manager. After his 1951 marriage to Barbara Ann Bronner, whom he had known in high school, he looked for a better job to support a family.
“He had a head for numbers and he was a people person,” his son-in-law David Doll said. “What he took away from Acme was the people side, how people come together.”
He joined Marine Midland of Central New York in 1952 and advanced through the managerial ranks. He was transferred to Buffalo in 1957 and was involved with the bank’s credit card operation when it expanded statewide.
He was named a senior vice president in 1969 and went on to become Marine’s highest-ranking executive in Buffalo. In 1975, he was appointed chief personnel officer for the statewide Marine banking system. He worked from offices in Buffalo and New York City, with homes in Orchard Park and Manhattan.
In 1983, three years after Marine was acquired by HSBC, he was given charge of the bank’s national retail and commercial banking section. The following year, he was named sector executive in charge of corporate resources and administration.
Four years later, his duties expanded further as he was named a member of the operating committee of Marine Midland Bank N.A. and chairman of Marine Midland (Delaware) N.A. He was a negotiator in more than 30 bank mergers and acquisitions.
When he retired from the bank in 1990, he was the administrator in charge of the bank’s credit policy, legal, human resources, government relations, audit and loan examination functions.
His association with MasterCard continued after he left Marine. In 1987, he had been named president of MasterCard International, with an office in Brussels, Belgium. When he stepped down in 1998, he was chairman of the board and acting president of MasterCard’s U.S. Region.
A guest lecturer at several universities, he also was author of numerous bank publications and a ghost writer on a financial handbook that sold half a million copies.
He served as president of the International Bank Marketing Association and had been chairman of the government relations committee of the New York State Bankers Association.
In 1998, he became the 12th recipient of the American Bankers Association Distinguished Service Award.
He served on the boards of directors of many businesses and nonprofit organizations, including the Canisius College Board of Regents.
He was a member of the Buffalo Club, the Buffalo Country Club and the Orchard Park Country Club and many community organizations.
A generous donor to philanthropic causes across Western New York, Mr. Ziegler endowed scholarships at Houghton College for the children of missionaries. He also was a trustee for the college’s Willard J. Houghton Foundation.
He moved from Snyder to Orchard Park in 1964 and was a longtime member of Orchard Park Presbyterian Church.
His hobby was woodworking. From a shop in his basement, he created cabinets and chests, restored antique trunks and built grandfather and grandmother clocks. He gave one to each of his children.
After his wife died in 2005, he was remarried in 2008 to the former Jane Riester O’Leary, a nurse and the widow of one of his longtime friends and colleagues at the bank. They moved to Amherst in 2010 and traveled extensively.
Survivors also include a son, David J.; two daughters, Suzan Z. Samsel and Heidi B. Ziegler Doll; two stepdaughters, Julie Muir and Jennifer Guptill; a brother, Scott; four grandchildren and three stepgrandchildren.
A memorial service will be planned at a later date.