Mastercard
Manager, Customer Onboarding and Partnership, Franchise
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Manager, Specialty Merchant Registration & Regulatory Programs (Europe)
The Manager, Specialty Merchant Registration & Regulatory Programs serves as Mastercard's regional subject matter expert for Specialty Merchant Registration and High-Risk Merchant Acquiring across Europe. This role enables the safe and compliant participation of high-risk acquirers, specialty merchants, payment facilitators, and emerging business models within the Mastercard ecosystem through effective management of registration, onboarding, licensing, compliance, and risk oversight activities.
The position requires strong leadership, organizational, and influencing skills to lead regional regulatory and registration initiatives from planning through execution. The role is responsible for ensuring timely delivery, stakeholder alignment, issue resolution, and executive visibility while coordinating complex regulatory and operational activities across multiple functions and geographies.
Key Responsibilities
Specialty Merchant Registration & High-Risk Acquiring
- Manage acquirers, specialty merchants, and payment facilitator lifecycle activities, including registration, licensing supplements, and program participation.
- Identify acquirers, merchants, payment facilitators, and other ecosystem participants requiring registration or additional enablement, and coordinate completion of required processes including following the escalation process and taking necessary actions including conditional approval or declining the application.
- Coordinate with internal stakeholders to support end-to-end execution.
- Design internal and external reports that help identify poor performance areas and hence need urgent attention.
- Engage with customers when there are performance issues (including rule violations).
- Support customers through training, education, and governance reviews to strengthen compliance, registration quality, and program performance.
- Work with colleagues in Franchise to improve such engagements and better manage Specialty Merchants (e.g. expanding their categories, identifying missing registrations, optimizing costs).
- Identify opportunities to improve operational efficiency and support regional objectives, governance, customer experience, and program effectiveness through process enhancement and automation.
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Regulatory Oversight & Compliance Coordination
- Serve as the central coordination point between Regulatory, Compliance, Legal, and Franchise teams to ensure regulatory requirements are effectively communicated, tracked, and implemented across Europe.
- Establish and maintain a centralized repository of regulatory obligations for the Franchise Europe team.
- Coordinate responses to regulatory information requests originating from regulators, supervisory authorities, compliance teams, and internal review functions.
- Drive the collection, validation, and consolidation of information required to support regulatory reviews, examinations, audits, licensing activities, and compliance assessments.
Leadership Support & Executive Engagement
- Act as a trusted advisor and strategic partner to European Franchise leadership team, supporting business planning, operational governance, and regulatory initiatives.
- Prepare executive briefings, leadership updates, business reviews, risk summaries, presentations, and strategic communications.
- Support leadership in prioritization, decision-making, issue management, and execution of strategic objectives.
- Drive alignment across regional and global stakeholders to ensure execution against organizational priorities.
Experience & Knowledge
- 5+ years of experience in payments, merchant acquiring, compliance, risk management, merchant onboarding, or related disciplines.
- Strong knowledge of merchant acquiring, specialty merchant programs, payment facilitators, licensing frameworks, and regulatory compliance requirements.
- Experience working with regulators, regulatory programs, risk and compliance functions, or highly regulated industries.
- Demonstrated success managing complex cross-functional initiatives involving multiple stakeholders and competing priorities.
- Experience preparing executive-level communications, governance materials, business cases, and strategic presentations.
- Strong analytical capabilities, including data analysis, reporting, trend identification, and risk assessment.
- Knowledge of cryptocurrency, gambling, financial services regulation, AML requirements, or other high-risk merchant sectors is highly desirable.
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Key Competencies
- Exceptional stakeholder management and relationship-building skills.
- Strong executive communication, presentation, and business writing abilities.
- Proven ability to influence and drive outcomes without direct authority.
- Strategic thinker with strong program management and execution capabilities.
- Ability to coordinate complex initiatives across multiple functions, regions, and subject matter experts.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving mindset with a focus on risk identification and mitigation.
- Highly organized with excellent prioritization, planning, and follow-through skills.
- Ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced, highly regulated, and evolving environment.
- Collaborative, proactive, and results-oriented approach.
- Fluent in English; additional European languages are an advantage.
Corporate Security Responsibility
All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks come with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:
- Abide by Mastercard’s security policies and practices;
- Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;
- Report any suspected information security violation or breach; and
- Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard’s guidelines.
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