Lead, Payments/Scheme Economics

The role

You will own the integrity, visibility and management of payment costs, including card scheme and interchange fees. You will translate complex network rules into financial, product and operational requirements to drive margin optimisation.

What you will do

• Own payment-cost integrity across scheme fees, interchange and network rules.
• Build accurate fee tables, eligibility criteria and transaction-level logic with Product and Engineering.
• Develop models and analytics to identify margin drivers, anomalies, leakage and opportunities.
• Drive structural cost and margin optimisation through transaction qualification and BIN routing.
• Strengthen governance, testing, reconciliation and automated controls.
• Serve as the escalation point for scheme pricing, interchange and rule-related questions.

Required qualifications

• 7+ years of relevant experience in payments, acquiring, issuing, card networks, payment infrastructure or related roles.
• Deep knowledge of card payment economics, particularly Visa and Mastercard interchange, scheme fees, transaction qualification and network rules.
• Strong ability to operationalise complex payment rules into system logic, configurations and controls.
• Experience with payment cost systems and controls, including interchange tables, scheme fee logic, BIN-based rules or transaction attributes.
• Strong analytical and quantitative capabilities, including experience working with transaction-level data and economic modelling.
• Strong commercial judgment to connect payment mechanics to pricing and margin optimisation.
• Exceptional attention to detail and ownership.
• Strong cross-functional execution across Product, Engineering, Finance, Data and Operations.

Nice to have

• Experience partnering directly with Visa, Mastercard or other payment networks.
• Experience applying AI or advanced analytics to rule interpretation, anomaly detection or payment-cost optimisation.

About the company

Airwallex is an AI-native financial operating system for a real-time, intelligent economy. The company provides financial infrastructure for global commerce and is co-headquartered in San Francisco and Singapore.