Lead Product Manager (Payments Risk)

Xero; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Xero is seeking a Lead Product Manager – Payments Risk to build risk capabilities that enable merchants to accept payments securely and with minimal friction. You will own product strategy and execution across merchant and transaction risk domains.

You will collaborate with Risk, Compliance, Engineering, Data and Operations to translate risk policy into scalable product features, decisioning systems and APIs, balancing fraud controls with conversion.

Qualifications

• Experience building payments risk capabilities within a payments platform or fintech.
• Strong analytical skills using fraud and loss data to guide decisions.
• Proven product management experience in technically complex environments.
• Experience partnering with Engineering, Data Science, Risk, Compliance and Operations.
• Ability to translate risk appetite into product controls and customer experiences.

Responsibilities

• Own the product strategy and roadmap for merchant and transaction risk.
• Build merchant eligibility, underwriting, risk segmentation, and monitoring capabilities.
• Develop fraud detection, monitoring and decisioning capabilities.
• Design risk controls for disputes, reserves, and payout risk.
• Collaborate across Risk, Compliance, Engineering and Operations to scale risk across markets.

Skills

Payments risk

Product management

Data analytics

Risk decisioning

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

APIs

Data models

Risk tooling

Job description

• As a Lead Product Manager – Payments Risk, you’ll build the risk capabilities that enable Xero customers to accept payments securely, reliably and with as little unnecessary friction as possible
• You’ll own product strategy and execution across two core areas:
• Merchant risk — including KYB/KYC, merchant eligibility, underwriting, risk segmentation, financial exposure management and ongoing merchant monitoring
• Transaction risk — including fraud detection and decisioning, transaction monitoring, disputes and chargebacks, reserves and holds, payout risk and payments loss management
• This is a Product Management role focused on payments risk, not a Risk Operations or Compliance role. You’ll partner closely with Risk, Compliance, Engineering, Data and Operations to turn risk strategy and policy into scalable product capabilities
• Own the product strategy and roadmap for merchant and transaction risk
• Build capabilities for merchant eligibility, underwriting, risk segmentation, financial exposure management and ongoing monitoring
• Build transaction fraud detection, monitoring and decisioning capabilities using signals, rules, scoring, velocity and limits
• Develop controls for disputes, chargebacks, reserves, holds, negative balances and payout risk
• Build the tooling and workflows needed to support investigation, review and risk operations
• Develop reusable capabilities for risk decisioning, rules, signals, limits, monitoring, alerts and case management
• Partner with Engineering and Data on APIs, data models, architecture and decisioning systems required to operate risk at scale
• Design capabilities that can support multiple processors, payment methods and markets
• Evaluate build-versus-partner decisions and determine where Xero should own risk capabilities versus rely on processors or specialist risk providers
• Translate risk appetite and policy into product controls and customer experiences
• Use data to balance fraud and financial loss against merchant friction, transaction conversion and operational cost
• Establish clear risk metrics and continuously improve decision quality, false-positive rates and loss performance
• Identify emerging merchant, fraud and loss patterns and evolve controls as risks change
• Success looks like:
• Legitimate merchants can accept payments with minimal unnecessary friction
• Higher-risk merchants and transactions are identified and treated appropriately
• Fraud, chargebacks and payments losses remain within Xero's agreed risk appetite
• Risk capabilities and decisioning can scale across processors, payment methods and markets

• Merchant risk: KYB/KYC, merchant onboarding, eligibility, underwriting, merchant risk assessment, financial exposure management and/or ongoing monitoring
• You should have meaningful Product Management experience across both:
• We're looking for someone who has built and operated risk capabilities within a payments platform, PSP, acquirer, PayFac, marketplace or similar payments environment
• Transaction risk: fraud detection and decisioning, transaction monitoring, disputes and chargebacks, reserves and holds, payout risk and/or payments loss management
• Deep, hands‑on payments risk product experience is essential for this role
• Significant Product Management experience in a technically complex payments or fintech environment
• Experience working with payment processors, acquirers and/or third‑party risk providers
• We're particularly interested in candidates whose experience extends beyond KYC/compliance or consumer identity fraud into broader merchant and transaction risk within a payments environment
• Strong analytical skills and experience using fraud, transaction and loss data to make product decisions
• Experience building risk decisioning capabilities using rules, signals, scoring, limits and data‑driven models
• Strong product judgement and the ability to make decisions where customer experience, growth and risk are in tension
• Strong understanding of how merchant risk, transaction risk and the movement of money create financial exposure
• Experience partnering closely with Engineering, Data Science, Risk, Compliance and Operations