Description
:
Essential Responsibilities:
1. Manage a strategic partnership roadmap to expand market reach, enhance product offerings, and drive revenue growth through key payment partnerships.
2. Manage relationships with banks, payment networks, financial institutions, and technology providers to create mutually beneficial collaborations.
3. Lead high-impact partnership negotiations, structuring agreements that align with business objectives, regulatory requirements, and long-term growth strategies.
4. Collaborate with internal stakeholders, including product development, marketing, sales, and legal, to ensure seamless execution of partnership initiatives.
5. Stay ahead of industry trends, regulatory changes, and competitive dynamics, identifying new opportunities to enhance payment capabilities and market positioning.
6. Optimize existing partnerships by continuously evaluating performance, renegotiating terms, and identifying areas for deeper collaboration.
7. Drive innovation in payment solutions by working closely with technology partners to integrate emerging technologies such as digital wallets, real-time payments, and blockchain.
8. Oversee key performance metrics to measure the effectiveness of partnership programs and ensure they contribute to business growth.
9. Represent the company in industry forums, conferences, and strategic discussions, positioning the organization as a leader in the payment ecosystem.
10. Lead and mentor a team of partnership professionals, fostering a high-performance culture focused on strategic growth, innovation, and relationship management.
Expected Qualifications:
11. 12+ years relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree OR Any equivalent combination of education and experience.
Additional Responsibilities & Preferred Qualifications:
Summary
We are seeking a Senior Director, Head of Payments for the German and European markets. Priority for this role will be Core Payments Operations & Partnerships, leading PayPal’s core payments ecosystem in the markets with emphasis on product and platform operations, industry relations, and execution excellence. This role requires subject matter expertise across payment platform capabilities including but not limited to SEPA, SEPA Instant, real-time payment rails, and new and emerging European schemes and payment platform resources.
This leader will own the E2E strategy, roadmap development and execution, regulatory readiness, incident learning and remediation, and performance of Core Payments in Europe, ensuring that product intent translates into resilient, compliant, and scalable payment capabilities. The role combines deep operational leadership with strong ecosystem and industry engagement, positioning PayPal for long-term competitiveness across European payment schemes.
Based in Berlin and reporting to the Global Head of Payments, Markets & Partnerships, this leader will be a senior connective layer across Product, Engineering, Operations, Risk, Compliance, Finance, and Regulatory and Government Relations, working with a cross-functional network of 10-20 professionals and influencing a more extensive network of virtual teams. This individual will serve as PayPal’s European Core Payments key point person, accountable for how payments are operated, improved, and represented externally, driving execution rigor and shaping partnerships and industry relations.
Key Responsibilities
1. European Payments Strategy & Product Operations
12. Define and execute PayPal’s Core Payments strategy for Europe across SEPA SCT, SDD, SCT Inst, and emerging schemes.
13. Own and prioritize the European Core Payments portfolio, balancing regulatory commitments, product evolution, operational resilience, and partner readiness.
14. Lead the roadmap for core payments in partnership with Product and Engineering, ensuring delivery sequencing and clear trade-offs.
15. Provide leadership across the full payments lifecycle, including authorization, clearing, settlement, liquidity, reconciliation, and disputes.
16. Assess country-specific regulatory and scheme requirements to determine the optimal processing, settlement, and operating model while supporting PayPal’s long-term European platform strategy.
2. Operational Excellence, Resilience & Continuous Improvement
17. Oversee operational performance and reliability of European payment flows, ensuring uptime, compliance, and strong customer experience.
18. Drive processing performance programs that govern key payment use cases, improve authorization and completion outcomes, and ensure scheme compliance.
19. Track and improve end-to-end performance metrics, including fail rates, settlement efficiency, liquidity management, and scheme KPIs.
20. Partner with Operations, Risk, and Engineering on incident management, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement, ensuring learnings are embedded into product design, operating processes, and partner governance.
3. External Partnerships & Ecosystem Engagement
21. Build and manage senior relationships with banks, regulators, payment schemes, clearing and settlement partners, and service providers across Europe.
22. Lead partner onboarding, scheme participation, and operational integrations, ensuring alignment with PayPal’s product, operational, and regulatory standards.
23. Partner with GR to represent PayPal in industry forums, scheme working groups, and regulatory discussions to influence policy and protect business outcomes.
4. Regulatory Alignment, Risk & Governance
24. Maintain strong awareness of EU payments regulation, including Instant Payments Regulation, PSD2/PSD3, ISO 20022 changes, and Central Bank requirements.
25. Partner with Risk, Compliance, and Legal to ensure scheme adherence, audit readiness and completion, operational integrity, and effective control frameworks.
26. Oversee readiness for industry-wide changes (ISO 20022 migration, scheme rule updates, central bank requirements).
27. Anticipate and translate regulatory, scheme, and supervisory changes into actionable business strategy and operational plans.
5. Cross-Functional Leadership & Executive Communication
28. Lead through influence across a matrixed organization, ensuring clear ownership, governance, coordinated decision-making, and escalation paths.
29. Serve as a senior subject-matter leader on European payment processing flows, partnering closely internally on messaging standards, clearing, settlement, and liquidity considerations.
30. Provide executive-level visibility into portfolio progress, operational performance, incidents, and risk trendswith informed, strategic recommendations.
Required Experience & Qualifications
31. 12+ years of experience in European payments, banking, payment schemes, fintech, or large-scale payment operations.
32. Deep expertise in SEPA schemes (SCT, SDD, Instant), TARGET2, ISO 20022, and European payments infrastructure.
33. Strong background in product leadership, payments operations, or payments partnerships, with demonstrated portfolio ownership.
34. Proven experience influencing and leading complex, cross-functional initiatives in matrixed environment.
35. Strong stakeholder management with regulators, banks, and/or industry groups.
36. Exceptional communication skills and strong problem-solving; able to influence at the executive level.
Preferred Experience
37. Experience within a major PSP, European bank, payments network, or fintech.
38. Leadership experience in SEPA Instant or real-time payments modernization.
39. Experience navigating regulatory reviews, audits, or significant control environments.
Subsidiary:
PayPal
Travel Percent:
0
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Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion
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