Manager, Benefits Centre of Excellence, Visa Europe

About Us Visa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid. At Visa, you'll have the opportunity to create impact at scale — tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives around the world. Join Visa and do work that matters – to you, to your community, and to the world.

Job Description The Benefits Centre of Excellence (CoE) centralises the sourcing, negotiation, onboarding and lifecycle management of premium benefits, giving issuers a turnkey catalogue that elevates Visa’s consumer propositions and directly advances our Consumer Solutions Strategy and Affluent Big Rock in Europe. Its scope spans Europe-wide supplier identification, commercial and operating model assessment, benefits sourcing, and platform integration and ongoing performance optimisation across Travel, Peace of Mind, Lifestyle & Entertainment and UHNW benefit areas. By centrally sourcing and managing differentiated, high-value benefits at scale, the CoE supports Visa Europe, all clusters and ultimately clients to drive higher cardholder engagement. The CoE speeds up time‑to‑market and captures cost efficiencies for Visa and our clients. Most importantly, it supercharges the “Affluent Big Rock” in the Visa 2030 roadmap—driving affluent acquisition, activation and incremental spend, and thereby fuelling sustainable revenue growth.

This high profile role is part of the Benefits Business Development team, with a UK & I focus on sourcing and commercial negotiation of cardholder benefits in the Travel, Peace of Mind, Lifestyle & Entertainment, and UHNW segments for Visa Europe’s Centre of Excellence.

Responsibilities

• Co-create a sales and partner strategy and build and manage a pipeline of potential benefits partners.
• Co-lead the asset development and design a standardized sales program setup, spanning verticals, segments, partner propositions, pricing, contracting, billing and tracking.
• Identify, assess and select best-in-class benefit partners, building a robust European supplier network while securing favourable pricing, service‑level agreements and contractual terms.
• Negotiate the terms, SLAs, contracting, renewals of sales activities, incl. build business case and obtain approval, and manage the end-to-end hand‑off to operations for onboarding.
• Lead integrated sales and sourcing model and cycles with Value-Added Services and loyalty, drive joint sales cycle management.
• Align with Regions, Global, Sourcing and Finance on margin management margin and business cases.
• Provide inputs for Benefits Operations to support the onboarding process for new benefit providers, incl. coordinating with legal, compliance, product, technology and marketing teams to ensure seamless integration into Visa platforms.
• Build in learnings from benefits performance into the sales approach and negotiations, e.g. benefits performance & utilisation, customer satisfaction, cost efficiency, partner service levels; drive continuous improvements of sales engine.

Visa requires at least 3 days in office, expectations of these days will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager.

Qualifications

• Progressive experience as a Product Manager, Proposition Manager or similar role within the payments, loyalty or card‑benefits ecosystem, preferably in a pan‑European context.
• Deep, hands‑on understanding of the UK payments and benefits landscape, incl. the range of cardholder benefit verticals (Travel, Peace of Mind, Lifestyle & Entertainment, UHNW).
• Demonstrated track record of screening, short‑listing and contracting benefit suppliers – including collaborating with Operations team on due‑diligence, financial and technical viability, service levels and regulatory compliance.
• Strong commercial acumen with experience structuring and negotiating multi‑market agreements; adept at optimising commercial terms, revenue‑share models, SLAs and KPIs.
• Ability to operate independently and as self‑starter, with the attitude to push through if things stall and to structure, prioritise and execute at pace if things scale.
• Proven ability to map benefit propositions to strategic priorities - specifically Visa’s 2030 strategy, the “Affluent Big Rock,” and issuer/client pain points - and to build compelling business cases that secure executive buy‑in to source benefit.
• Understanding of the end‑to‑end sourcing cycle, including required hand‑offs for integration and onboarding of benefit partners onto Benefits platforms, and understanding of cross‑functional needs, e.g. legal, compliance, technology and marketing functions.
• Excellent stakeholder‑management and communication skills; able to influence senior internal and external audiences across diverse cultures and to lead cross‑functional project teams in a fast‑moving, matrixed environment.

Visa is an EEO Employer Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.