Director of Payment Partnerships

The Director of Payments Strategic Partnerships is a senior individual contributor responsible for defining and executing the end to end fintech partnership strategy for our clients embedded payments SaaS platform processing more than eight billion dollars in annual volume. Reporting to the Head of Payments within the Product organization, this leader architects the global gateway, processor, and network ecosystem to drive competitive differentiation, platform growth, and improved unit economics. The role owns strategy and execution across processor and partner relationships to expand capabilities, increase total payment volume, and enhance gross margin. Success is measured by measurable impact on revenue growth, margin expansion, and the adoption of partner driven innovations across the ecosystem.

What You Will Do

• Define and execute a multi year payments partnership strategy across processors, gateways, networks, ISVs, ISOs, PayFacs, digital wallets, and risk providers to drive growth and economic performance.
• Identify capability and economic gaps within the existing payments stack and continuously refine the partner ecosystem to strengthen competitive positioning.
• Expand integrated payment capabilities across web, mobile, recurring payments, ACH, and fraud tools in partnership with Product Management and Engineering, ensuring solutions are scalable and commercially viable.
• Own senior level relationships with strategic payment partners, develop joint business plans, and lead governance cadences including QBRs and roadmap reviews to monitor performance and resolve escalations.
• Lead complex commercial negotiations and execute high value processing and partner agreements, developing financial models to improve routing, mix shift, cost containment, and gross margin.
• Collaborate with Product, Engineering, and Architecture to guide platform integrations including APIs, webhooks, and data flows, ensuring compliance and informing build versus partner decisions.
• Identify, qualify, and prioritize new processor and ecosystem partnerships, leading full deal lifecycle execution from solution planning through contract and launch.
• Drive cross functional alignment across Product, Engineering, Finance, Legal, and Operations, serving as the subject matter expert on payments economics and ecosystem trends and influencing senior stakeholders with data driven business cases.

What You Bring

• 8 or more years of experience in fintech payments with substantial hands on experience in processor and acquirer relationships, ISO and PayFac models, and commercialization of embedded payments.
• Deep expertise in merchant services economics, including interchange, scheme fees, acquiring markup fees, revenue share, buy rate mechanics, and residual structures.
• Direct experience operating as a PayFac, ISO, or acquiring entity with PCI DSS compliance, AML and KYC frameworks, and card brand scheme rules.
• Proven track record structuring and negotiating complex multi year commercial agreements as a senior individual contributor.
• Experience influencing product roadmaps and integrations within a SaaS or platform environment.
• Strong financial modeling and analytical capabilities with P&L ownership mindset and scenario modeling experience.