Principle Payments Strategy Consultant – Routing & Orchestration

Senior Payments Routing Consultant

Contract | 6 Months (Likely Extension) | Hybrid – London | ASAP Start

Competitive day rate inside IR35

Shape the future of one of the world's largest payment ecosystems.

I’m seeking a senior Payments Routing Consultant to support the evolution of its future Payments platform.

This is a strategic consulting assignment focused on answering a fundamental question:

Should my client move payment routing intelligence away from PSP-controlled logic and into its own orchestration layer?

Working alongside the PSP Governance and Fintech Commercial teams, you'll lead a strategic discovery, develop the business case and define the roadmap for how intelligent payment routing could improve commercial performance, operational resilience and long-term scalability across my clients global payments domain.

The Assignment:

You'll assess my clients current payment routing architecture and evaluate how greater control over routing decisions could deliver-

• Reduced PSP dependency
• Improved cost optimisation
• Greater operational resilience
• Increased routing transparency
• Better governance and control
• Enhanced scalability to support future growth

This is not a delivery role.

It's a strategic consulting engagement that will shape how my client’s extensive payments platform evolves towards 2027.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the discovery and assessment of the current payments routing model.
• Analyse existing PSP, MID and merchant account architecture.
• Identify commercial, operational and technical improvement opportunities.
• Build a robust business case for MID-level routing and payment orchestration.
• Define a practical implementation strategy and roadmap.
• Engage senior stakeholders across Finance, Treasury, Commercial, Product, Operations, Technology and Governance.
• Provide executive recommendations that influence the future direction of client’s global payments platform.

Deliverables:

Phase One-

• Current-state assessment
• Opportunity analysis
• Commercial business case
• Executive recommendations

Phase Two-

• Delivery roadmap
• Implementation strategy
• Testing and rollout approach
• Risk, dependency and governance framework

About You:

You'll be a recognised payments expert with 10-15+ years' experience operating within complex enterprise payment environments.

You'll bring expertise across:

• Payment routing
• Merchant acquiring
• PSP strategy
• Merchant account (MID) architecture
• Payment orchestration
• Settlement and reconciliation
• Card schemes and network operating models
• Cross-border payments

You'll also have experience delivering strategic transformation initiatives, producing board-level business cases and influencing senior stakeholders across both technical and commercial functions.

Ideally You'll Have Experience With:

• Payment orchestration platforms
• Smart routing
• Multi-PSP environments
• Payment Facilitator models
• Enterprise payment transformation
• High-volume global merchants

Why This Assignment?

This is an opportunity to influence the future design of one of the travel industry's most sophisticated global payment platforms.

Your recommendations will help determine how my client approaches payment routing, orchestration and PSP strategy as it prepares for the next generation of its payments infrastructure.

Contract:

• 6-month initial engagement
• Likely extension to 12 months
• Hybrid (London)
• ASAP start