Senior Card Payments Specialist

Overview

In this Senior Card Payments Specialist role, you act as the go-to expert for card payments, shaping the design, build and ongoing operation of Starling’s banking environment. You collaborate closely with engineering and technology teams to ensure schemes rules and regulatory controls are applied correctly. You’ll guide incident response and operational issues, translating card payment requirements into practical technical action. This role offers impact across the end-to-end payments lifecycle in a fast-moving, collaborative fintech culture.

Pay / Benefits

• 33 days holiday (incl. public holidays)
• Birthday leave
• Pension scheme with salary sacrifice
• Private Medical Insurance
• Cycle to Work
• EV leasing

Responsibilities

• Serve as SME for card payments across the organisation
• Support design, build and operation of card payment capabilities with scheme rules and compliance in mind
• Provide expert input during incidents and operational issues, aiding diagnosis and resolution
• Translate card scheme requirements into actionable technical and operational tasks for engineers
• Review solutions from a card payments perspective to identify operational, scheme or compliance risks
• Ensure payment capabilities align with Visa, Mastercard rules and standards
• Maintain end-to-end knowledge of authorisation, clearing, settlement, disputes, and fraud
• Work with banks, processors, PSPs, card schemes and other third parties
• Support governance, risk management and regulatory compliance in payments

Key requirements

• Approximately 15 years in banking/financial services
• Extensive hands-on card payments experience
• Deep knowledge of end-to-end card payments lifecycle
• Strong understanding of Visa and Mastercard rules and compliance
• Experience collaborating with engineering/architecture teams in payments environments
• Ability to translate complex requirements for technical teams
• Experience as payments SME during incidents and complex issues
• Understanding of issuing, acquiring, processing, disputes, chargebacks and fraud
• Experience with EMV configurations, in-life testing, card stock and print management
• Experience operating in regulated financial services environments
• Strong risk, governance and compliance mindset
• Excellent analytical, problem solving, communication and stakeholder management skills

• analytical thinking
• effective communication
• stakeholder management
• card payments lifecycle
• card schemes rules (Visa, Mastercard)
• incident management

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