Head of Merchant Acquiring Fintech

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

Operational Leadership & Strategy

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.

Payment & Acquiring Operations

Oversee onboarding flows (SDKs/APIs), transaction routing and failover, real-time monitoring, settlements, clearing, reconciliations, remittances, exceptions, reversals, and chargebacks.

Risk, Fraud & Compliance

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.

Vendor & Partner Management

Manage relationships with banks, acquirers, PSPs, gateways, and networks. Negotiate pricing, SLAs, integration terms, and monitor vendor performance.

Technology & Process Improvement

Work with engineering on system reliability, monitoring, and incident response. Drive automation, operational controls, governance, and postmortems.

Team Leadership & Reporting

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.