Head of Customer, Payments & Schemes

JOB TITLE: Head of Customer, Payments & Schemes (Open)

SALARY: From £104,992

LOCATION(S): Chester

HOURS: Full time

WORKING PATTERN: Hybrid, 40% (or two days) in an office site

About this opportunity

We're seeking a leader for our Customer, Payments & Schemes team to help elevate customer interactions, shape the future of credit card payments, and optimise our Visa and Mastercard partnerships.

As a direct report to the Cards Managing Director, you'll be pivotal in bringing the voice of the customer to every meeting.

You'll ensure efficiency, effectiveness and security of credit card payments, adapting to technological advances and emerging rails. You’ll also deepen our Visa and Mastercard partnerships, acting as our senior liaison, building relationships, negotiating and leveraging the scheme contracts to benefit our offerings and strategy.

We need someone versatile, customer-focused, and strategic about credit card payments, schemes and partnerships.

Join us to drive innovation and strengthen our market position.

What you'll be doing...!

• Champion a customer-centric approach, ensuring that our customers are at the heart of everything we do. Bring design thinking to the forefront, conducting customer research and testing to help inform our strategies and enhance user experiences.
• Key role in amplifying the voice of the customer in all decision-making processes, ensuring their feedback shapes our products and services.
• Accountable for overseeing the Group Customer Dashboard, complaint management, and as a result of these insights helping to reimagine customer journeys through initiatives such as mystery shopping and customer research.
• Collaborate closely with payments specialists across the Group and develop a credit cards-specific payment strategy. Working across Platforms, Customer Relationships, Group Payments and other teams, to develop innovative credit card payment experiences that resonate with our customers.
• Represent the Cards business at influential industry platforms, driving thought leadership across Open Banking, digital transformation, regulatory change, and emerging trends.
• Shape the future agenda in collaboration with Customer Relationships.
• Maximise the strategic relationships with Visa and Mastercard to drive value for our credit cards business and beyond.
• Oversee the deployment of scheme funds for modernisation initiatives, ensuring that resources are allocated effectively to deliver anticipated value.
• Maintain accountability for scheme compliance, ensuring that our operations meet the highest standards of regulatory and industry requirements.

About us

We’re on an exciting journey and there couldn’t be a better time to join us. The investments we’re making in our people, data, and technology are leading to innovative projects, fresh possibilities, and countless new ways for our people to work, learn, and thrive.

What you’ll need

• Experience and proven track record of driving future business, driving meaningful change, and delivering exceptional value to customers.
• Experience of managing financial budgets with associated planning and delivery of required targets.
• Significant experience engaging with senior business leaders to understand long-term strategic challenges and implementing strategic business plans/solutions to deliver long-term goals.
• Solid knowledge and experience of developing tactical plans for optimisation of resources and assets managed within a given area or department.
• Strong background of managing successful teams - including personally investing in the growth of own and others' capabilities, through mentoring and other informal methods.
• You'll have a real passion for customer experience.
• You'll have gained previous experience of payments innovation.

And any experience of these would be really useful

• Cards background would be desirable.

About working for us

Our focus is to ensure we're inclusive every day, building an organisation that reflects modern society and celebrates diversity in all its forms.

We want our people to feel that they belong and can be their best, regardless of background, identity or culture.

We were one of the first major organisations to set goals on diversity in senior roles, create a menopause health package, and a dedicated Working with Cancer initiative.

And it’s why we especially welcome applications from under-represented groups.

We’re disability confident. So, if you’d like reasonable adjustments to be made to our recruitment processes, just let us know.

We also offer a wide-ranging benefits package, which includes:

• A generous pension contribution of up to 15%
• An annual bonus award, subject to Group performance
• Share schemes including free shares
• Benefits you can adapt to your lifestyle, such as discounted shopping
• 30 days’ holiday, with bank holidays on top
• A range of wellbeing initiatives and generous parental leave policies

Want to do amazing work, that’s interesting and makes a difference to millions of people? Join our journey.