Payments Process Lead

Process Lead – Payment Service Provider (PSP) Governance

Rate: £575 per day (Inside IR35)

Location: London (Hybrid – 3 days per week onsite)

Duration: 6–12 months

Sector: Payments / Fintech

Payments experience: Essential

Overview

A leading fintech organisation is seeking an experienced Process Lead – PSP Governance to join its Commercial Operations function. This team is responsible for defining and maintaining the internal processes that support critical activities such as partner onboarding, contract processing, financial management, and due diligence across payment partners, including Payment Service Providers (PSPs). The successful candidate will bring strong payments industry experience, particularly within access management, governance, and compliance , and will work closely with Product, Finance, Commercial, and PSP Administration teams to define access models and document merchant account structures across existing and newly onboarded PSPs.

Role Summary

As Process Lead – PSP Governance , you will play a key role in preparing the organisation for future scale and regulatory compliance. Your focus will be on documenting the current (“as-is”) state of payment partner access models and account structures, identifying gaps and improvement opportunities, and embedding robust compliance controls suitable for a regulated environment. This role requires strong stakeholder management, vendor engagement, and hands-on experience designing and documenting user access models within the payments ecosystem.

Key Responsibilities

• PSP User Access Governance
• Design and implement user access policy models for existing and new PSPs and issuers, including:
• Discovery: Mapping available access model types on PSP/issuer platforms to internal team structures
• Review: Assessing and rationalising current user access across PSPs and issuers
• Reporting: Working with PSPs/issuers to design access reporting that supports SOx-compliant controls
• Superuser management: Aligning platform superuser access with internal governance protocols
• Documenting processes for maintaining and updating superuser access
• Regulatory readiness: Ensuring access models meet the requirements of a regulated legal entity
• Execution: Partnering with offshore administration teams to implement new access models, user setup, and reporting
• Account & Sub-Account Structure Governance
• Document and rationalise account and sub-account structures across PSPs and issuers by:
• Engaging Product, Finance, and other internal teams to understand the purpose of existing accounts
• Documenting settlement bank accounts and currencies linked to each PSP/issuer
• Working with Treasury to confirm compliance of settlement structures
• Coordinating with PSPs/issuers to close obsolete or unused sub-accounts
• Ensuring account structures support regulatory and routed volume requirements
• Skills & Experience
• Payments Operations Experience: Minimum 3 years’ experience in operations, access management, or governance roles
• Strong preference for candidates with payments industry and regulated environment exposure
• Stakeholder & Vendor Management: Proven ability to influence internal teams and external providers to implement compliant access models
• Compliance & Governance Knowledge: Good understanding of regulatory controls and compliance expectations in financial services or technology environments
• Analytical & Data-Driven Mindset: Comfortable interpreting access data, reporting outputs, and operational metrics
• Cross-Functional Delivery: Demonstrated success working with Product, Finance, Commercial, Compliance, and Operations teams