Strategic Payments Partnerships Director

Job Description

Strategic Payments Partnerships Director | Lightspeed HQ

The Tone:
This is a high-impact individual contributor role for Lightspeed, with the option of fully remote work. Lightspeed builds a one-stop commerce platform that helps merchants simplify, scale, and provide exceptional customer experiences by unifying online and physical operations, payments, and financial solutions. This role is critical as it owns key financial services partner relationships that underpin Lightspeed Payments, Capital, and other products, creating and executing strategies that drive adoption and represent a majority of the company’s revenue.

The TL;DR
• Role: Full Time
• Type: Full-time
• Location: Remote
• Team: Individual contributor reporting to the Head of Payments
• Mission: This person creates and executes strategies to increase the adoption of Lightspeed Payments and Capital.

What You’ll Actually Do
• Develop Strategies: Create and execute strategies to win new merchants and convert existing ones to Lightspeed Payments and Capital users.
• Manage Relationships: Own relationships with major card brands and key global financial services providers, building joint business plans with clear priorities.
• Drive Collaboration: Collaborate with internal teams like Strategy, Product, Legal, and Sales to translate company objectives into actionable partnership initiatives.
• Optimize Economics: Identify and execute opportunities to improve payments economics, including margin expansion, approval performance, and commercial terms.
• Lead Negotiations: Lead complex negotiations and commercial structuring with card brands, acquirers, and strategic partners, balancing growth, economics, risk, and feasibility.

The Must-Haves
• Background: Director-level individual contributor with core domain knowledge in financial services, fintech, card-network, acquiring, or payments.
• Experience:
• Managing major payments providers (5+ years), such as Fiserv, Stripe, Adyen, PayPal, and Worldpay.
• Managing card-brand relationships (3+ years), including Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.
• Shaping financial services strategy (5+ years) in a relevant context.
• Supporting product launches and market expansion (3+ years) for financial services products or geographies.
• Applied understanding of payments economics and the broader ecosystem (5+ years), including card network dynamics and acquiring models.
• Skills:
• Executive-level Communication: Fluency in engaging at an executive level, with strong written and verbal communication skills across internal and external stakeholders.
• Accountability & Collaboration: Ability to work independently with a high degree of accountability while collaborating effectively across a matrixed organization.
• Commercial Acumen & Analytical Rigor: Strong commercial instincts paired with analytical rigor, sound judgment, and close attention to execution detail.
• Influence & Drive: Confidence to bring forward ideas, share clear recommendations, influence decisions constructively, and demonstrate a proactive, action-oriented mindset to see opportunities through to outcomes.