Manager, Payments/Scheme Economics

Location: London, United Kingdom; hybrid with three days per week in the London office

Company

Airwallex is an AI-native financial operating system and regulated global payments infrastructure company serving more than 675,000 businesses across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.

What you will do

• Own payment-cost analysis across scheme fees, interchange, and network rules, translating changes into financial, product, and operational requirements.
• Maintain fee tables, eligibility criteria, transaction-level logic, and payment-cost configurations with Product and Engineering.
• Build models and reporting across markets, products, payment methods, and transaction types to identify margin drivers, anomalies, leakage, and optimization opportunities.
• Support transaction qualification, BIN routing, cost configuration, pricing, product design, market launches, and commercial decisions.
• Strengthen governance, testing, reconciliation, and controls by comparing expected costs with actual network charges and resolving root causes.
• Partner with Finance, Product, Engineering, Data, Operations, and external payment partners on scheme pricing, interchange, and network rules.

Requirements

• Experience in payments, acquiring, issuing, card networks, payment infrastructure, or a related role, ideally in a global PSP, acquirer, scheme, issuer, or fintech.
• Strong knowledge of card payment economics, especially Visa and Mastercard interchange, scheme fees, transaction qualification, and network rules.
• Experience translating payment rules, fee schedules, or network requirements into system logic, configurations, and controls.
• Experience with payment-cost systems or controls, including interchange tables, scheme-fee logic, BIN-based rules, transaction attributes, or similar configurations.
• Strong analytical and quantitative capabilities, including transaction-level data analysis, economic modelling, and reconciliation of expected versus actual payment costs.
• Commercial judgment and the ability to connect payment mechanics to pricing, product decisions, and margin optimization.
• Exceptional attention to detail, ownership, and discipline when managing complex rules with significant financial impact.
• Strong cross-functional execution across Product, Engineering, Finance, Data, Operations, and external payment partners.

Nice to have

• Direct partnership experience with Visa, Mastercard, or other payment networks.
• Experience applying AI or advanced analytics to rule interpretation, anomaly detection, or payment-cost optimization.

Culture & Benefits

• Work in a regulated global payments business with a cross-functional Finance and Corporate Development team.
• Ownership, first-principles thinking, comfort with ambiguity, direct communication, and respect are valued.
• Full-time hybrid work with three days per week from the London office.

Hiring process

• Apply through careers.airwallex.com or Airwallex's official LinkedIn page.
• Official communication comes only from an @airwallex.com email address; Airwallex does not request bank details, sensitive ID numbers, or payment during recruitment.
• Unsolicited applications from search firms or recruiters are not accepted.