Cards Scheme Operations Technical Lead

Wise is a global technology company, building the best way to move and manage the world’s money.

Min fees. Max ease. Full speed.

Whether people and businesses are sending money to another country, spending abroad, or making and receiving international payments, Wise is on a mission to make their lives easier and save them money.

As part of our team, you will be helping us create an entirely new network for the world's money.

For everyone, everywhere.

More about our mission and what we offer.

We are looking for a Technical Team Lead to take ownership of two critical Global Cards Operations domains: Cards Billing Operations and Cards Settlement Operations. You will sit at the intersection of operations, product, and engineering, leading technical initiatives that drive down costs, eliminate junk fees, and ensure our scheme payouts are executed flawlessly and on time.

As the Technical Team Lead for Cards Billing & Settlements, you will be the operational owner and technical anchor for your domains. You won’t just be keeping the lights on-you will be re-engineering how we work. Your focus will be divided between two core missions:

• Cards Billing Operations: Maintaining and optimizing scheme and partner costs. You will spearhead technical initiatives to increase fee transparency, reconcile complex billing data, and aggressively root out and reduce junk fees.

• Cards Settlement Operations: Ensuring that settlement payouts to card schemes (e.g., Visa, Mastercard) are executed strictly on time, while continuously looking for structural ways to reduce settlement costs.

What You’ll Do (Key Responsibilities & KPIs)

• Drive domain strategy and cost ownership

  Define the strategy for Spend Billing and Settlement Operations, with a focus on reducing operational costs with schemes, including Visa and Mastercard while maintaining on-time payout SLAs and strong internal controls.

• Own the yearly roadmap and team OKRs

  Translate business priorities into a clear roadmap, actionable OKRs, and team plans that support Product initiatives such as country launches, new products (add-ons, credit), contribution margin improvements, and operational scalability.

• Own Billing and Settlement performance

  Be accountable for key domain KPIs, including settlement payout SLA, billing reconciliation rate, cost per transaction and avoidable cost reduction.

• Drive technical problem solving and automation

  Lead root-cause analysis for settlement delays, payout discrepancies, billing issues, and control gaps. Ensure that incidents are driven to resolution. Design scalable solutions that reduce manual reconciliation and payout.

• Own audit, compliance, and control readiness

  Ensure scheme mandates are effectively rolled out. Act as the main POC for external auditors to provide control evidence and ensure remediation actions are implemented timely. Continuously improve Billing and Settlement processes with appropriate checks, approvals, and accountability.

• Act as the main cross-functional point of contact

  Partner with Finance, Treasury, Analysts, Payment Operations, Internal Controls across Tallinn and London to raise or resolve billing and settlement matters including, month-end reporting, internal controls reports, banking integrations (especially with US BIN sponsors).

• Manage, coach, and upskill the team

  Directly manage the team, clarify ownership, support performance and growth, and upskill team members in project management, SQL, dashboards, automation thinking, and practical AI usage to improve efficiency.

• Strong Visa/Mastercard billing and settlement domain expertise, including scheme billing, settlement cycles, mandates and partner cost structures.
• Strong understanding of relevant payment methods and banking integrations, including how settlement payouts are executed through existing payment rails such as direct debits, bank transfers, or other payout mechanisms.
• People management skills to directly manage, coach, develop, and upskill the team.
• Strategic planning skills to own yearly roadmaps, OKRs, priorities, and delivery plans across Billing and Settlement Operations.
• Stakeholder management skills with the ability to context-switch easily.
• Clear decision-making and communication skills to explain complex billing, settlement, cost, and control issues to senior stakeholders.
• Prioritisation and trade-off judgment across SLA delivery, cost reduction, audit readiness, Product launches, and team capacity.

For everyone, everywhere. We're people building money without borders - without judgement or prejudice, too. We believe teams are strongest when they are diverse, equitable and inclusive.

We're proud to have a truly international team, and we celebrate our differences.

Inclusive teams help us live our values and make sure every Wiser feels respected, empowered to contribute towards our mission and able to progress in their careers.

If you want to find out more about what it's like to work at Wise visit Wise.Jobs.

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