Merchant Services Schemes Director

JOB TITLE: Merchant Services Schemes Director

LOCATIONS: Flexible

HOURS: Full-Time

WORKING PATTERN: Our work style is hybrid, which involves spending at least two days per week, or 40% of our time, at one of our office sites

About This Opportunity

LBG Merchant Services offers a diverse range of payment solutions to merchants of all sizes - from micro businesses to large enterprises - across face-to-face, online, and telephone channels. As customer expectations grow, so does the need for sophisticated, scalable payment capabilities. Merchant Services has received significant investment under the Group Strategic Review demonstrating its strategic importance to the Group.
 

We’re seeking a highly skilled and motivated Schemes Director to lead all scheme-related activity and relationships (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, etc.) across the business. Reporting to the Head of Commercial and Pricing, you’ll use your deep expertise in Schemes, acquiring and the payments ecosystem to build a best-in-class schemes function that supports our growth strategy.

You’ll collaborate closely with Scheme partners, internal Merchant Services, and other Lloyds Card teams to maximise the value of available resources and expertise. In collaboration with Product, Pricing, and our joint venture partner Fiserv, you’ll help evolve our schemes strategy, manage commercial relationships & cost base, and drive the build of a fully automated scheme infrastructure.

Key Accountabilities include:

• Develop schemes strategy and team: build a high-performing, cross-functional team working across Merchant Services product, sales, portfolio management, revenue operations and pricing and with other LBG areas (Issuing, Commercial Cards) to achieve our business growth ambitions

• Lead all scheme relationships: evolve our strategic relationships with the schemes (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Diners, JCB, UPI, etc) working to jointly agreed targeted initiatives to facilitate growth

• Be responsible for and provide schemes advisory: you and your team will provide schemes specific expertise to colleagues, existing and prospective merchants across the full customer lifecycle unlocking resources and knowledge within the schemes and/or our partnerships where appropriate

• Drive key scheme initiatives: work with our joint venture partner, Fiserv, product, platform and pricing team to prioritise proposed scheme changes and drive action and/or adoption, ensuring innovation, compliance and minimizing leakage

• Promote key scheme information and developments: keep the business and our larger merchants ‘in the know’ on key changes and new and evolving initiatives and broader network landscape

• Manage scheme related regulatory requirements and input: manage and respond to any regulatory changes and requests in a timely fashion coordinating across the Group

• Maintain and optimise scheme commercials: own and work to actively manage the current and future costs that we and our merchants incur through our scheme memberships, working closely with Pricing and the rest of the team to improve our financial control

What You'll Need

We welcome applications from all who are excited about the prospect of joining us on our growth trajectory and who can demonstrate the following skills:
 

• Commercial understanding of the acquiring business and broader card payments landscape plus scheme initiatives

• Have strong Schemes experience, ideally in a similar role

• Proven track record of developing and implementing strategies to grow scheme partnerships

• Success in building and implementing new frameworks and processes to support operational excellence

• Experience effectively leading and developing teams

• Strong critical thinking and problem-solving skills

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to effectively collaborate across varied business areas with senior leadership

About Working For Us

Our ambition is to be the leading UK business for diversity, equity and inclusion supporting our customers, colleagues and communities and we’re committed to creating an environment in which everyone can thrive, learn and develop. 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.

We offer reasonable workplace adjustments for colleagues with disabilities, including flexibility in office attendance, location and working patterns. And, as a Disability Confident Leader, we guarantee interviews for a fair and proportionate number of applicants who meet the minimum criteria for the role with a disability, long-term health or neurodivergent condition through the Disability Confident Scheme. We provide reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process to reduce or remove barriers. Just let us know what you need.

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

• A generous pension contribution of up to 15%

• An annual performance-related bonus

• 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

Ready for a career where you can have a positive impact as you learn, grow and thrive? Apply today and find out more.