Director, Payment Platform Strategy

About Us

Visa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

At Visa, you'll have the opportunity to create impact at scale - tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives around the world.

Join Visa and do work that matters - to you, to your community, and to the world. Progress starts with you.

Job Description

Job Summary

The Director, Payment Platform Strategy is a senior individual contributor responsible for driving strategy across Visa’s domestic and regional processing portfolio. The role will own Visa’s localization and sovereignty strategy, including defining new platform offerings across VisaNet and OVN in partnership with regional, market, and corporate strategy teams.

The Director will also provide strategic oversight of broader domestic and regional demand, ensuring clear visibility into current priorities, capacity, work in flight, and the backlog. Working with product and technology leaders, the Director will help shape prioritization decisions and ensure regional teams receive timely, transparent guidance on whether requests can be accommodated and when.

This is a hands-on role that connects strategy to execution. The Director will partner with product delivery, release management, VisaNet, OVN, and regional teams to improve intake and handoffs, reduce the time required to reach decisions, expand adoption of the agentic toolchain, and identify opportunities for greater reuse and standardization.

Key Responsibilities

Localization and Sovereignty Platform Strategy

• Own and evolve Visa's strategy for domestic processing, localization, and sovereignty across the platform portfolio.
• Partner with regional, market, and corporate strategy teams to define new platform offerings, deployment models, and operating approaches that address evolving market and sovereignty requirements.
• Develop recommendations for how market needs should be addressed across global VisaNet capabilities, localized deployments, OVN-based solutions, and sovereign platform models.
• Identify opportunities for reusable capabilities and common platform patterns that reduce reliance on market-specific solutions and accelerate future deployments.

VisaNet and OVN Roadmap and Solutioning

• Own the strategic relationship between VisaNet and OVN for domestic and regional processing initiatives.
• Align VisaNet and OVN roadmaps, modernization plans, and client migration approaches to provide a coherent long-term platform strategy for regional stakeholders and clients.
• Evaluate where capabilities should converge vs remain distinct and surface strategic gaps, dependencies, and investment needs.
• Assess how regional, localization, and sovereignty requirements should be addressed across VisaNet and OVN, helping define the most appropriate platform approach for different market needs.

Regional Demand Management and Communication

• Maintain a consolidated view of regional demand, work in flight, backlog, and investment priorities.
• Lead monthly regional reviews and communicate roadmap priorities, delivery expectations, and tradeoffs.
• Identify opportunities for platform reuse and common solutions across markets while highlighting areas that require unique local treatment.
• Partner with product and technology leaders on prioritization decisions and capacity tradeoffs.
• Ensure stakeholders receive timely and transparent guidance regarding request disposition and expected delivery timing.
• Improve intake quality, handoffs, and decision-making processes.
• Ensure domestic, regional, and sovereign market needs are understood, represented, and reflected in platform strategy, roadmap discussions, and modernization planning..

Cross-Functional Partnership and Communication

• Build trusted relationships across product, technology, strategy, risk, compliance, release management, delivery, and regional teams.
• Bring together VisaNet, OVN, regional, product, and technology stakeholders to resolve cross-platform dependencies, communicate decisions, and drive alignment on strategic priorities.
• Develop executive-ready views of regional demand, roadmap priorities, capacity constraints, and investment tradeoffs, providing leadership with clear visibility into domestic processing, localization, and sovereignty initiatives across markets.
• Promote adoption of agentic ways of working that improve visibility, coordination, and decision speed.

What Success Looks Like

• Visa has a clear and repeatable strategy for addressing domestic processing, localization, and sovereignty requirements across markets, with defined platform offerings and solution approaches for a range of market needs.
• Regional stakeholders have confidence in how priorities are evaluated, with clear visibility into work in flight, backlog priorities, capacity constraints, and expected delivery timeframes.
• Regional reviews are a trusted forum for surfacing issues, evaluating tradeoffs, and driving timely decisions across product, technology, and regional stakeholders.
• VisaNet and OVN maintain a coordinated approach for supporting domestic processing, localization, sovereignty, and client migration objectives, with clear alignment on platform direction and investment priorities.
• New market requirements are increasingly addressed through reusable capabilities, common platform patterns, and repeatable deployment approaches rather than one-off solutions.
• Leadership has clear visibility into regional demand, strategic priorities, key tradeoffs, and the status of domestic processing, localization, and sovereignty initiatives across markets.
• Regional, VisaNet, and OVN teams collaborate effectively, with improved intake quality, reduced handoff friction, faster prioritization decisions, and greater transparency into dependencies and platform direction.

Visa requires at least 3 days in office, expectations of these days will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications

• 10 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or at least 8 years of work experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters/ MBA/JD/MD) or at least 3 years of work experience with a PhD

Preferred Qualifications

• 12 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or 8-10 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 6+ years of work experience with a PhD
• Deep familiarity with payment systems (card networks, ACH, real-time payments); direct VisaNet or comparable network platform experience is preferred.
• Track record shaping strategy or roadmap for platform products used by multiple internal and external stakeholders across regions.
• Experience working across two or more platforms or product lines to build a shared roadmap and manage dependencies.
• Comfortable translating technical concepts into clear choices and recommendations for senior stakeholders.
• Strong analytical skills; able to look at a set of client, market, and technology inputs and turn them into a clear recommendation on what to prioritize.
• Track record bringing structure to complex cross-functional decision-making processes involving multiple stakeholders, competing priorities, and platform dependencies.
• Direct, plainspoken communicator, written and verbal, who can influence without direct authority.

• Comfortable operating in ambiguous, cross-functional, global environments.

Leadership Profile

• A trusted strategic thought partner capable of challenging assumptions, identifying opportunities, and helping senior leaders make difficult trade-off decisions.
• A strategic operator who connects regional, domestic, and sovereign market needs to platform strategy, modernization priorities, and long-term investment decisions.
• A rigorous facilitator who asks incisive questions and helps leaders sharpen options and recommendations across regional and cross-platform reviews.
• A collaborative partner who builds trust, exercises sound judgment, and works effectively across functions and regions.
• An exceptional communicator who brings clarity to ambiguity and translates complex platform topics into decision-ready narratives for senior audiences.
• A curious, learning-oriented leader motivated by the future of payments, platform modernization, localization, sovereignty, and the impact of emerging technologies and payment models on Visa's platform strategy.
• Outcome-oriented, low ego, and comfortable operating with pace in a dynamic, global environment.

Information for US Applicants

For roles located in the US, the estimated salary range for this position is $200,000.00 to $ 320,000.00 USD per year, which may include potential sales incentive payments (if applicable). Salary may vary depending on job-related factors which may include knowledge, skills, experience, and location. In addition, this position may be eligible for bonus and equity.Visa has a comprehensive benefits package for which this position may be eligible that includes Medical, Dental, Vision, 401(k), FSA/HSA, Life Insurance, Paid Time Off, and Wellness Program.

Work Hours

Varies upon the needs of the department.

Travel Requirements

This position requires travel 5-10% of the time.

Mental/Physical Requirements

This position will be performed in an office setting. The position will require the incumbent to sit and stand at a desk, communicate in person and by telephone, frequently operate standard office equipment, such as telephones and computers.

Visa is an EEO Employer

Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protect veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.