Fraud Strategy Specialist - Card Issuance

Felix; Ohio; Remote; USD 120,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Annual bonus

401(k)

Remote work

Health, dental, and vision plans

Unlimited PTO

Parental leave

Job summary

Félix is seeking a Fraud Strategist to own the end-to-end fraud strategy for a new card issuance program. You will design the authorization framework, set up controls, and partner with Product, Engineering, and external vendors to scale securely across LATAM and beyond.

You will size fraud exposure using SQL/BigQuery, monitor network thresholds, and build playbooks to enable rapid product expansions while maintaining risk controls and customer experience.

Qualifications

• 4–7+ years in fraud/risk strategy with hands-on card authorization experience.
• Advanced SQL and data sizing of risk exposure.
• Experience with BaaS / card issuing vendors (Stripe Issuing, Marqeta, Galileo).
• Strong cross-functional communication across Fraud, Product, Compliance, and external vendors.
• Fluent English; Spanish or Portuguese a plus for LATAM focus.

Responsibilities

• Own fraud strategy for the card issuance program end-to-end, from pre-launch to steady-state monitoring.
• Translate vendor responsibilities into an operating decisioning model with real controls.
• Design and own authorization decisioning for card transactions (3DS/SCA, velocity limits, holds).
• Monitor fraud health against card-network thresholds and build early-warning systems.
• Build the fraud lifecycle: onboarding risk, first-card-use monitoring, BIN- and portfolio-level patterns.
• Collaborate with Product and Engineering to embed controls in flows, not afterthoughts.
• Own card dispute and chargeback strategy in partnership with Fraud Operations.
• Be the fraud voice in vendor conversations and keep requirements up to date.
• Use SQL/BigQuery to size fraud exposure and backtest thresholds.
• Build a reusable playbook for future card products or markets.

Skills

Fraud strategy

Card authorization

SQL

BigQuery

Cross-functional collaboration

English

Vendor management

LATAM familiarity

Tools

BigQuery

Stripe Issuing

Marqeta

Galileo

Job description

About Us

At Félix, we are building the indispensable financial companion for Latinos in the US. We combine an AI-powered, conversational-first interface with real-time financial infrastructure to make cross-border money movement as easy as sending a text. Starting with fast, affordable remittances powered by AI and crypto rails, we are expanding into credit, savings, and wallet services to support the complete immigrant financial journey. Our ambition is to deliver a white-glove financial experience with the simplicity of a conversation to a community the traditional financial system has historically overlooked.

We are a hyper-growth Series C company, backed by over $300 million in funding from top-tier global investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, QED, Castle Island, Switch Ventures, HTwenty, Monashees, General Catalyst Customer Value Fund. This isn't just about the numbers; it's a testament to the trust our investors have in our vision and our team. Additionally, Félix was selected as an “Endeavour Entrepreneur” and was a recipient of the CrossTech Fintech Startups Award.

Joining Félix means you will be part of a team building a legacy, a company that will outlive us all. This is a rare opportunity to apply your skills to a deeply meaningful mission—serving a community that has been underserved for too long because we are obsessed with our customers. We get things done with urgency and focus, driven by extreme ownership over our impact. We collaborate without ego, fostering radical transparency and fierce loyalty so we can grow together. Because we aim for insanely great rather than just good enough, we stay insatiably curious—always experimenting, building the future today, and delivering a product that truly makes our users' lives better.

About the Role

You’ll join the Fraud Strategy team at Felix — the team responsible for how we detect, decide on, and prevent fraud across every product, payment rail, and country we operate in. We sit at the intersection of Data Science, Product, Operations, and Risk: we turn fraud signals into decisions, design the controls that stop bad actors, and make sure good customers move through with as little friction as possible. As Felix grows into new rails, new products and new markets across Latin America, our job is to let the business say yes to growth without letting fraud scale alongside it.

Felix is building a new card issuance program, and with it, a new fraud surface: we’ll own authorization decisioning end-to-end and carry direct exposure to card network fraud and dispute monitoring (Visa/Mastercard-style thresholds). This is a build role — there's no existing card fraud stack to inherit, and our infrastructure partner isn't a fraud team, so the decisioning architecture gets built by this role, from the ground up.

We’re looking for a Fraud Strategist to own that build: turn our vendor's area-of- responsibility split into a real decisioning architecture, keep us under network fraud and dispute thresholds from day one, and design the authorization strategy using the full toolkit — step-up authentication, velocity controls, holds, product-level friction — not rules as the default answer. Rules are a last resort here, not the first move.

Responsibilities

• Own fraud strategy for the card issuance program end-to-end — from pre-launch risk assessment through steady-state monitoring after go-live.
• Translate our infrastructure partner's area-of-responsibility split into an operating decisioning model. Card issuing infrastructure providers generally aren't fraud teams — authorization decisioning, onboarding fraud, velocity controls, and cross-account detection sit with Felix, and this role turns that into actual controls, not just a documented split.
• Design and own authorization decisioning for card transactions: approve/decline logic, 3DS/SCA step-up, velocity limits, cross-card/cross-account linkage — biased toward product and action-based controls over static rule sprawl.
• Own network-level fraud health. Monitor fraud-to-sales and dispute ratios against card network thresholds (Visa's VAMP, Mastercard's excessive chargeback program) and build the early-warning system that keeps us out of penalty territory before it's a problem, not after.
• Build the cardholder fraud lifecycle: onboarding risk, first-card-use monitoring, BIN- and portfolio-level pattern detection.
• Partner with Product and Engineering to embed controls into the card issuance and wallet funding/spend flow directly, instead of bolting rules on after the product ships.
• Own card dispute and chargeback strategy (network reason codes, representment approach) in partnership with Fraud Operations.
• Be the fraud voice in ongoing vendor conversations — our current issuing infrastructure partner and any future ones — keeping the requirements doc current as the program evolves.
• Use SQL/BigQuery hands-on to size fraud exposure, backtest authorization thresholds, and monitor post-launch indicators, iterating fast as real transaction data comes in.
• Build the playbook, not just the launch — so the next card product or market expansion plugs in without renegotiating fraud ownership from scratch.

Requirements

• 4–7+ years in fraud/risk strategy, with direct, hands-on experience in card authorization decisioning — issuer, acquirer, program manager, or processor side.
• Working knowledge of card network mechanics: authorization/clearing/settlement flow, 3DS/SCA, network fraud-monitoring programs (Visa VAMP or equivalent, Mastercard excessive chargeback programs), and dispute reason codes.
• Experience working with or evaluating BaaS / program-manager card issuing vendors (Stripe Issuing, Marqeta, Galileo, or similar), including fraud AoR/RACI negotiation.
• Advanced SQL. This person needs to independently query and size risk, not route it to an analyst.
• Demonstrated bias toward product and action-based fraud controls (step-up auth, holds, dynamic friction) over rules as the default fix.
• Comfortable building in ambiguity on a 0-to-1 program — translating vendor documentation, legal, and compliance input into an actual operating model.
• Strong cross-functional communication; this role sits at the intersection of Fraud, Product, Compliance, and an external vendor.
• Advanced English.

Nice to Have

• Prior experience specifically with card issuing at a fintech or program manager (rather than acquiring-side or card-not-present e-commerce fraud only).
• Familiarity with stablecoin-backed card programs or general crypto experience.
• Spanish or Portuguese, given the LATAM corridor focus.
• Background in cross-border remittance or LATAM-market fraud.
• Experience negotiating or managing a BIN sponsor / issuing bank relationship.

What We Offer

• Competitive salary
• Initial stock options grant
• Annual performance bonus
• 401(k)
• Work model: currently fully remote, with a future transition to a hybrid set up
• Health, dental, and vision plans
• Continuous learning opportunities
• Unlimited PTO
• Paid parental leave
• Empowering opportunities for growth in a dynamic entrepreneurial environment

Equal Opportunity Employer

At Félix, we are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all qualified employees and applicants without regard to race, religion, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, or disability. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruitment, hiring, placement, promotion, training, compensation, benefits, and termination.

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