Head of Payment Operations

Description

IG Group is a FTSE 100 fintech operating across five continents, serving over 1.4m customers and handling billions of dollars in transactions – built on scale, trust, and proof. We didn't pivot to innovation; it's how we've always operated. What that means for the people who work here is real: genuinely complex problems to solve, the technology and resources to tackle them properly, and the kind of scope that's rare in established businesses.

Desirable

• Payment operations experience in trading, brokerage or another high-volume, high-velocity consumer financial services environment.

• Exposure to alternative payment methods, stablecoins and digital asset rails.

• Experience applying automation and AI-enabled operating models to operational processes.

• Familiarity with multi-jurisdictional regimes (FCA, ASIC, DFSA or equivalent).

Essential

• Substantial experience leading payment operations in a regulated financial services environment, including accountability for teams in more than one location.

• Deep, practical understanding of payment rails, card acquiring and issuing, open banking and the architecture behind them.

• A track record of commercial ownership: negotiating with vendors, managing a budget and delivering cost reduction you can point to.

• Strong risk judgement, particularly around client money protection, and the confidence to hold a control when it matters.

• Excellent analytical skills. You are comfortable in large transaction datasets and you build the argument yourself rather than waiting for someone to build it for you.

• Credibility with senior stakeholders and the communication skills to make a complex payments problem land with a non-specialist audience.

• A structured approach to identifying, defining and prioritising work, and the discipline to sequence it.

Shape the product

• Act as business sponsor for payments change, from problem definition through to benefit realisation.

• Set and maintain a payments roadmap spanning automation, open banking and instant rails, alternative payment methods and new market entry.

• Work with Engineering and Product to secure and defend the delivery capacity that roadmap needs.

What we offer

• Competitive salary

• Flexible Benefits Package on top of your salary (12%)

• Private medical cover for you and your family

• Life insurance

• Contribution to gym memberships

• 25 Days holiday, with 1 additional day off to celebrate your Birthday & 2 additional days off a year for voluntary work (28 in total)

• The option to buy or sell holiday days

• A comprehensive global and local onboarding process

• Enhanced primary (maternity), secondary (paternity), and shared parental pay and leave, as well as a range of support and benefits for parents

Lead the global team

• Lead Payment Operations across the UK, India and Australia, driving consistent standards, coverage and service quality across time zones.

• Set clear performance expectations, develop your leadership layer and build succession into critical roles.

• Coach and mentor across the wider team, raising technical payments capability alongside management capability.

Run a controlled operation

• Own the control environment for payments, with particular focus on the protection of client money and on obligations across our regulated entities.

• Partner closely with Financial Crime, Fraud and Compliance on payment-related risk, including account takeovers.

• Own audit and regulatory findings within the function and close them at root cause.

Turn payments data into decisions

• Define and report the metrics that matter: authorisation and acceptance rates, cost to serve, straight-through processing, reject and failure reasons, time to fund and time to withdraw.

• Use that reporting to change what the business does, and make the case to senior stakeholders who do not work in payments.

Own the vendor and commercial agenda

• Own the payments vendor strategy end to end: selection, negotiation, performance management and exit.

• Manage the payments vendor budget and hold providers to their commercial and service commitments.

• Reduce cost per transaction through routing, method mix, pricing and contract renegotiation, with a clear evidence base behind every decision.

Your role in the Team’s Success:

• The line management of the global Payment Operations teams (Australia, India and UK).

• Responsibility for the management of our payment vendors and commercial relationships.

• Supporting the development of the payments product.