Director of Payments

Role overview Establish and grow commercial partnerships that enable tap-to-pay functionality on a wearable device, with transit as a potential future area of expansion. This is an early-stage, hands-on leadership role: shape the partnership strategy and operating model while taking deals from initial outreach through launch and growth.

Responsibilities - Build and prioritize a pipeline of card issuers, payment networks, processors, wallet providers, and prospective transit partners. - Secure issuer agreements and negotiate commercially sound terms. - Create partner-specific launch plans spanning co-marketing, enrollment, activation, adoption, and ongoing use. - Coordinate Product, Engineering, Legal, and Marketing on partner needs, technical dependencies, and launch timing. - Establish the payments commercial model, including pipeline reporting, partnership economics, usage goals, and P&L visibility. - Manage partnerships through launch and scale, addressing technical or adoption issues and pursuing renewals or expansion. - Develop a roadmap for bringing tap-to-pay into transit.

Requirements - At least 10 years of experience in payments, wallets, fintech, or related ecosystem partnerships. - Direct experience with issuers, networks, processors, wallet platforms, or comparable payments organizations. - A record of owning complex partnerships from sourcing and business-case development through negotiation, contracting, launch, and expansion. - Strong knowledge of payments roles and economics, including issuer, processor, and network relationships, interchange, and relevant regulation. - Experience negotiating commercial structures such as co-marketing funds, activation incentives, exclusivity, tiering, and revenue or interchange sharing. - Ability to create partnership practices in an early-stage, ambiguous setting and align internal teams around external requirements. - Executive communication and influence, plus willingness to travel periodically for partner meetings, events, and team gatherings.

Nice to have - Experience launching a payment, wallet, or tap-to-pay product from pre-launch through scaled adoption. - Background in wearables, consumer hardware or technology, or digital health. - Senior relationships across payments, mobility, or transit organizations; international launch experience is also useful. - Experience with enrollment flows, activation incentives, co-marketing, usage growth, and partnership performance reporting.

Benefits and work setup The role is open to candidates in San Francisco or New York, locations selected for proximity to many issuers. Listed benefits include salary and equity, health, dental and vision coverage, mental health resources, an employee device and discounts, paid vacation and holidays, flexible wellness days, and paid sick and parental leave. Published US salary ranges vary by location tier: USD 200,600–236,000, 182,750–215,000, or 164,900–194,000.