Global Payments Operations Leader

IG Group; Greater London; On-site; GBP 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

IG Group is seeking a Head of Payment Operations to lead a global team across multiple regions, shaping the payments roadmap and governance. You will own vendor relationships, drive cost efficiency, and align payments strategies with regulatory risk controls.

The role requires senior stakeholder influence and deep payments expertise. The position oversees end-to-end payment operations, risk management, and performance metrics, collaborating with Engineering, Compliance and Product to realise the

Qualifications

• Substantial experience leading payment operations in a regulated financial services environment.
• Accountability for teams in more than one location.
• Deep understanding of payment rails, card acquiring and issuing, open banking.
• Track record of commercial ownership: negotiating with vendors, managing a budget and delivering cost reduction.
• Strong risk judgment, particularly around client money protection, and the discipline to uphold controls.
• Excellent analytical skills with comfort in large transaction datasets and the ability to build arguments independently.
• Credibility with senior stakeholders and the ability to explain complex payments to non-specialists.
• Structured approach to identifying, defining and prioritising work.
• Payment operations experience in trading, brokerage or high-volume consumer financial services.
• Exposure to alternative payment methods, stablecoins and digital asset rails.
• Experience applying automation and AI-enabled operating models to operational processes.
• Familiarity with multi-jurisdictional regimes (FCA, ASIC, DFSA or equivalent).

Responsibilities

• Lead Payment Operations across the UK, India and Australia, driving consistent standards, coverage and service quality across time zones.
• Set clear performance expectations, develop your leadership layer and build succession into critical roles.
• Coach and mentor across the wider team, raising technical payments capability alongside management capability.
• Own the payments vendor strategy end to end: selection, negotiation, performance management and exit.
• Manage the payments vendor budget and hold providers to their commercial and service commitments.
• Reduce cost per transaction through routing, method mix, pricing and contract renegotiation, with a clear evidence base behind every decision.
• Act as business sponsor for payments change, from problem definition through to benefit realisation.
• Set and maintain a payments roadmap spanning automation, open banking and instant rails, alternative payment methods and new market entry.
• Work with Engineering and Product to secure and defend the delivery capacity that roadmap needs.
• Own the control environment for payments, with focus on the protection of client money and on obligations across regulated entities.
• Partner with Financial Crime, Fraud and Compliance on payment-related risk, including account takeovers.
• Own audit and regulatory findings within the function and close them at root cause.
• Define and report the metrics that matter: authorisation and acceptance rates, cost to serve, STR, reject and failure reasons, time to fund and time to withdraw.
• Use that reporting to change what the business does, and make the case to senior stakeholders who do not work in payments.

Job description

IG Group is seeking a Head of Payment Operations to lead a global team across multiple regions, shaping the payments roadmap and governance. You will own vendor relationships, drive cost efficiency, and align payments strategies with regulatory risk controls.

The role requires senior stakeholder influence and deep payments expertise. The position oversees end-to-end payment operations, risk management, and performance metrics, collaborating with Engineering, Compliance and Product to realise the