Head of Merchant Acquiring Fintech

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This range is provided by Buckden Partners. Your actual pay will be based on your skills and experience — talk with your recruiter to learn more.

Head of Merchant Acquiring – EMI – Electronic Money Institution

As Head of Acquiring, you’ll shape and scale end-to-end acquiring operations — from merchant onboarding and integrations to settlement, reconciliation, chargebacks, fraud, and risk. You’ll build processes that keep payments secure, seamless, and efficient while leading a high-performing team and strengthening partnerships with banks, acquirers, PSPs, and networks.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and execute the operational roadmap for scalability, resilience, and cost efficiency. Structure onboarding, settlement/reconciliation, chargeback, fraud, and ops-support teams. Set KPIs, SLAs, and metrics; drive continuous improvement, capacity planning, and OPEX control.
• Oversee onboarding flows (SDKs/APIs), transaction routing and failover, real-time monitoring, settlements, clearing, reconciliations, remittances, exceptions, reversals, and chargebacks.
• Build fraud detection and prevention processes; set risk policies and thresholds. Ensure compliance with PCI DSS, AML/KYC, GDPR, and payment regulations. Manage internal/external fraud and dispute vendors.
• Manage relationships with banks, acquirers, PSPs, gateways, and networks. Negotiate pricing, SLAs, integration terms, and monitor vendor performance.
• Work with engineering on system reliability, monitoring, and incident response. Drive automation, operational controls, governance, and postmortems.
• Recruit and mentor operations teams; foster accountability and metrics-driven culture. Report operational KPIs, risks, and incidents to senior leadership. Partner with Product, Engineering, Risk, Finance, and Sales to boost merchant experience and approval rates.

Qualifications

• 7–10+ years in payments/acquiring/fintech operations; 3–5+ in senior roles.
• Deep knowledge of card acquiring, settlement, reconciliation, chargebacks, fraud, and PSPs.
• Strong vendor/acquirer management, data‑driven mindset, regulatory familiarity (PCI DSS, AML/KYC), and excellent leadership skills.

What We Offer

• Competitive salary, variable compensation tied to acquiring growth.
• Influence on UK PayFac strategy, international environment, inclusive culture, career development, travelcard, and free lunch.

Seniority level

Director

Employment type

Full‑time

Job function

• Business Development and General Business
• Banking, Investment Banking, and Financial Services

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