Product Manager, Benefits CoE

Product Managers in Product Development/Management drive product strategy from conception and definition through implementation. They identify new business and market opportunities, create business plans, and determine market requirements for products, ensuring alignment with organizational objectives and image. The role functions as a central resource, interacting with systems, marketing, and sales during product development, and formulates and executes long‑term plans for cost and profit control. Product Managers promote the use of new technologies and industry-leading trends. All roles require digital fluency, including the ability to work with emerging technologies such as Generative AI tools (e.g. ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot) to support everyday work.

Key Responsibilities

• Direct product strategy from conception through implementation.
• Identify and evaluate new business and market opportunities.
• Develop business plans and determine market requirements for products.
• Ensure product consistency with organizational image and objectives.
• Serve as a central resource, collaborating with systems, marketing, and sales during product development.
• Formulate and execute long‑term plans for cost and profit control.
• Promote adoption of new technologies and industry‑leading trends.

Benefits

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.

Role Overview

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

• Pre‑sales – Co‑create a sales and partner strategy and build and manage a pipeline of potential benefits partners.
• Pre‑sales – Co‑lead the asset development and design a standardized sales program setup, spanning verticals, segments, partner propositions, pricing, contracting, billing and tracking.
• Sales – 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.
• Sales – 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.
• Evergreen – Lead integrated sales and sourcing model and cycles with Value‑Added Services and loyalty, drive joint sales cycle management.
• Evergreen – Align with Regions, Global, Sourcing and Finance on margin management margin and business cases.
• Operations – Provide inputs for Benefits Operations to support the onboarding process for new benefit providers, coordinating with legal, compliance, product, technology and marketing teams to ensure seamless integration into Visa platforms.
• Operations – 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.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications

• Experience in product management, product ownership, business process analysis, or sales operations.
• Experience applying Agile principles across design, development, testing, and product management.
• Experience developing software capabilities to support sales, service, or customer relationship management functions.
• Experience in managing and implementing complex projects directly or through supervision.
• Experience working in cross‑functional teams to implement and assess operational impact of process changes.
• Experience soliciting and translating user feedback to inform product development.
• Experience driving product development with high velocity and quality.
• Experience in project management techniques, methodologies, and best practices such as Agile.
• Experience leading large Scrum teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Agile certifications such as CSM and CSPO, or their equivalent.
• Experience working with issuers and clients in the financial services industry or high‑growth technology companies.
• Experience in product management in payments, common services, and identity and access management.
• Experience in API development using SOAP or REST, JSON, and XML.
• Experience in API security, security standards, data encryption, and HSMs.
• Experience managing cross‑functional teams in global, highly matrixed organizations.
• Experience developing and executing product strategies that drive adoption and revenue growth.

Additional Qualifications (Role‑specific)

• 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.