Head of Payments

Vio; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Viowe is seeking a Head of Payments to lead our OTA payments strategy, multi-rail expansion, and MOR operations as we scale toward €1B+ in volume. You will own payments strategy, execution, and cross‑functional leadership to improve acceptance, lower costs, and align with product roadmaps across checkout and monetisation.

This senior role demands deep payments expertise, a data‑driven approach, and ROI focus to drive unit economics, compliance, and scalable processes.

Responsibilities

• Define payments strategy and build the 2026–2027 payments roadmap aligned with expansion plans.
• Design and manage a portfolio approach, including market prioritization and local acquiring expansion in priority growth markets.
• Own commercials end-to-end: pricing negotiation across processing, FX, disputes/refunds, settlement currencies, and SLAs.
• Partner closely with the Checkout/Monetisation Product Lead to align the payments roadmap with checkout conversion goals, localisation and payment method strategy, authentication decisions (3DS/SCA), and rollout plan.
• Establish and run a regular payments performance cadence (dashboards, issues, experiments, outcomes).
• Run structured optimisation loop through issuer pattern analysis, soft/hard decline strategy, 3DS/SCA strategy, retries, and failover.
• Improve unit economics by separating and optimising cost drivers: scheme/interchange, PSP/acquirer markup, FX, disputes/refunds, and fraud.
• Define the “primitives” for multi-PSP

Job description

At Viowe believe booking accommodation should feel smart, fair, and effortless — never overwhelming or unclear.

As one of the world’s fastest-growing travel tech platforms, we help millions of users make smarter travel decisions by comparing stays across booking sites — so they can find the perfect place, at the best price, anywhere in the world. We cut through the noise and complexity of hotel and vacation rental booking, surfacing real value with clarity, transparency, and full support. No tricks. No confusion. Just great stays — booked with confidence. With operations in 100+ markets and growing fast, our mission is to reshape how people discover and book accommodation through technology travelers can trust.

We are looking for someone to lead Payments within our Online Travel Agency (OTA) Merchant of Record (MOR) business. Payments is a major driver of unit economics and conversion at our scale, and will be a critical capability as we grow toward €1B+ in volume.

The Head of Payments will own the payments strategy and operations for the OTA business line: building a scalable multi-rail setup, improving acceptance in priority markets, reducing cross-border and FX cost, and ensuring MOR operations (refunds/disputes, reconciliation/settlements, compliance) scale smoothly.

With approximately 35% partner & commercial strategy, 25% payments performance optimization, 20% platform direction, and 20% MOR operational excellence , this is a senior role requiring strong payments domain expertise, cross-functional leadership, and a pragmatic approach to building capability with meaningful ROI.

What You Will Do

Payments Strategy, Acquiring & Partner Portfolio

• Define payments strategy and build the 2026–2027 payments roadmap aligned with the company’s expansion plans

• Design and manage a portfolio approach, including market prioritization and local acquiring expansion in priority growth markets

• Own commercials end-to-end: pricing negotiation across processing, FX, disputes/refunds, settlement currencies, and SLAs

• Partner closely with the Checkout/Monetisation Product Lead to align the payments roadmap with checkout conversion goals, localisation and payment method strategy, authentication decisions (3DS/SCA), and rollout plan

Payments Performance Optimisation

• Establish and run a regular payments performance cadence (dashboards, issues, experiments, outcomes)

• Run structured optimisation loop through issuer pattern analysis, soft/hard decline strategy, 3DS/SCA strategy, retries, and failover

• Improve unit economics by separating and optimising cost drivers: scheme/interchange, PSP/acquirer markup, FX, disputes/refunds, and fraud

Payments Platform Direction

• Define the “primitives” for multi-PSP