Manager, Smart Acquirer Services (SAS) Commercial Program Management

Our Purpose

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.

Title and Summary

About Mastercard

Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments sector. We power payments and provide products and services for individuals and industries around the world. Our people, technology, data and brand provide the capabilities that drive our success. We believe in connecting people to priceless possibilities.

Overview

Mastercard’s Global Acceptance & Merchant Solutions team is transforming the acquiring ecosystem through Smart Acquirer Services (SAS), a strategic initiative designed to deliver a single access point to Mastercard acceptance, security, performance optimization and innovation capabilities through Merchant Cloud. SAS is being commercialized globally across multiple regions and markets, requiring a scalable operating model, governance framework, commercialization playbooks and market rollout strategy.''

The Manager, Smart Acquirer Services Program Management will serve as the central program lead responsible for driving end-to-end execution of the SAS initiative globally. This individual will act as the connective tissue across Product, Finance, Legal, Regional Teams, Controllers, Services, Implementation, Customer Delivery and Commercialization teams to ensure successful launch and scale of SAS across priority markets.

This role requires a highly organized commercial PMO leader capable of managing complex global initiatives, driving accountability across workstreams, building scalable playbooks and ensuring market readiness from business case through launch and adoption.

Role

As Manager, SAS Program Management, you will be responsible for establishing and operating the global program office supporting Smart Acquirer Services.

You will own the planning, governance, execution and reporting framework required to successfully launch and scale SAS across multiple markets and regions.

• Global Program Leadership: Establish and manage the overall SAS program governance model, including executive steering committees, working groups, weekly program reviews, milestones, dependencies, risk registers and escalation paths.
• Country Commercialization Playbooks: Build and maintain a repeatable SAS commercialization framework that can be deployed market by market, starting with priority markets including South Africa, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Georgia and Mauritius.
• Market Qualification & Readiness: Coordinate revenue opportunity assessments, business case development and readiness reviews across commercial opportunity, competitive landscape, regulatory considerations, sponsorship, stakeholder alignment and launch qualification criteria.
• Product & Bundle Governance: Coordinate global decisions regarding SAS bundle composition, product inclusion and exclusion governance, regional product requirements, rollout sequencing and alignment with the product roadmap.
• Business Cases, Pricing & Finance: Partner with Finance, Controllers and Pricing teams to establish market business cases, revenue allocation methodologies, RPIC approvals and tracking of projected and realized revenue impact by market.
• Commercialization & Go-to-Market Execution: Coordinate regional commercialization workstreams, develop market-level rollout plans, drive acquirer prioritization, customer engagement planning, roadshows, enablement programs and launch readiness activities.
• Implementation & Customer Delivery: Partner with implementation and delivery teams to establish standardized onboarding processes for acquirer onboarding, Merchant Cloud provisioning, certification, customer acceptance testing and go-live readiness reviews.
• Launch Governance & Adoption: Manage launch approval processes and decision gates, define adoption KPIs and success metrics, build executive dashboards and track adoption, activation and revenue realization across markets.

Success Metrics

• Number of markets launched on schedule.
• Revenue impact delivered versus business case.
• Country readiness and approval cycle times.
• Acquirer onboarding and adoption rates.
• Commercialization milestone attainment.
• Program governance effectiveness.
• Executive stakeholder satisfaction.
• Program risk mitigation and issue resolution.

All About You

• Proven experience leading complex global programs, PMOs or strategic transformations.
• Strong background in payments, acquiring, acceptance, gateways or value-added services.
• Experience coordinating cross-functional teams across Product, Finance, Legal, Sales, Services, Operations, Implementation and Customer Delivery.
• Demonstrated ability to manage executive stakeholders and influence without authority.
• Exceptional program management, governance and organizational skills.
• Strong commercial acumen with experience building business cases, financial models and market launch plans.
• Ability to drive complex initiatives from concept through commercialization, launch and adoption.
• Experience managing multiple markets and regions simultaneously.
• Comfortable operating in a highly matrixed global organization.
• Strong communications and executive presentation skills.
• Analytical, structured and data-driven.
• PMP, MBA or equivalent program management experience preferred.

• English fluency required.

Corporate Security Responsibility

All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes 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.