Remote Payments Operations Analyst

Astra Inc.; United States; On-site; USD 65,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity compensation

Remote-first culture

Career growth in compliance and risk

Impactful mission-driven work

Job summary

Astra Inc. is seeking a Payments Operations Analyst to keep our money movement rails — ACH, RTP, FedNow, and card networks — running smoothly and to be the operational glue between Astra, our sponsor banks, and our clients.

You’ll work at the intersection of banking operations, product, and client support, monitoring transaction flows, resolving exceptions, and helping scale our sponsor bank relationship as volume grows.

Qualifications

• 0–2 years of experience in payments operations, banking operations, or a related fintech/financial services role.
• Comfortable learning payment rails (ACH, RTP/FedNow, card networks) quickly on the job; no prior deep expertise required.
• Willingness to write and own external-facing communication with banking partners.
• Comfortable writing basic SQL queries, or eager to learn quickly.
• Strong attention to detail — reconciling financial data across systems.
• Ability to manage multiple concurrent open items/threads without letting things fall through the cracks.
• Comfortable working in a fast-moving startup environment with evolving processes.
• Ability and willingness to travel up to ~15% annually.

Responsibilities

• Monitor daily transaction activity across ACH, RTP/FedNow, and card rails for anomalies, failures, and settlement issues.
• Triage and resolve payment exceptions, including ACH returns, AFT/OCT decline codes, and failed settlements.
• Draft and send day-to-day operational emails to sponsor banks — flag discrepancies and push issues to resolution.
• Maintain a running log of open items across bank partners and drive them toward closure.
• Investigate and respond to chargebacks and disputes, assembling evidence and tracking cases to resolution.
• Reconcile network settlement files against internal records to identify and resolve discrepancies.
• Run SQL queries against production transaction data to support limit increase requests and analysis.
• Build projection models to support rail-specific limit increase requests with sponsor banks.
• Support client-facing escalations related to payment failures, delays, or fraud disputes.
• Document processes and identify opportunities to automate reconciliation and dispute workflows.

Skills

SQL

BigQuery

Spreadsheets

ISO 8583

NACHA rules

Card networks

Bank partner coordination

Education

Bachelor's degree in Finance, Business, Economics, or related field

Equivalent practical experience

Tools

Payment processing systems

Core banking platforms

Job description

Astra Inc. is seeking a Payments Operations Analyst to keep our money movement rails — ACH, RTP, FedNow, and card networks — running smoothly and to be the operational glue between Astra, our sponsor banks, and our clients.

You’ll work at the intersection of banking operations, product, and client support, monitoring transaction flows, resolving exceptions, and helping scale our sponsor bank relationship as volume grows.