Job Description:

Rakuten Group, Inc. is a global leader in internet services that empower individuals, communities, businesses, and society. Founded in Tokyo in 1997 as an online marketplace, Rakuten has expanded to offer services in e-commerce, fintech, digital content, and communications to approximately 1.7 billion members around the world. The Rakuten Group has nearly 32,000 employees and operations in 30 countries and regions. For more information visit https://global.rakuten.com/corp/

Rakuten Travel, a fast-growing business unit, specializing in Online Travel, both in the B2B and B2C industry is expanding to build its global footprint in the OTA industry. Rakuten Travel has employees in different Rakuten offices across the globe. 

We are seeking a payments leader to drive end-to-end acquiring and acceptance initiatives across the company. This role will own the strategy and execution for optimizing our payment architecture—spanning legal/licensing, operating processes, treasury and settlement flows, and commercial performance—while coordinating closely with internal stakeholders and external partners (acquirers, payment service providers, schemes, wallets, and alternative payment methods). The ideal candidate combines deep domain knowledge of acquiring with strong stakeholder management, data-driven decision-making, and a track record of delivering measurable business outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy and Roadmap

• • Define and own the multi-year acquiring and acceptance strategy to support growth, conversion, and cost efficiency across markets and channels.
  • Build the payments acceptance roadmap (new markets, methods, tokenization, SCA/3DS strategies, network tokenization, retries/optimizations) aligned to commercial goals.
  • Lead business cases for new acquirer routes, APMs, and scheme programs; quantify ROI

Payment Architecture and Optimization

• • Design and optimize the end-to-end payment stack, including routing logic, redundancy/failover, fraud and risk controls, authorization optimization, capture/settlement, refunds/chargebacks, and reconciliation.
  • Partner with Engineering/Product to implement routing, retries, network tokens, BIN intelligence, and data enrichment to boost authorization rates and reduce costs.
  • Drive scheme compliance and operational excellence (e.g., dispute management, chargeback mitigation, representment playbooks).

Licensing, Legal, and Compliance

• • Coordinate with Legal/Compliance on licensing needs, regulatory frameworks (e.g., 3DS 2.0, strong customer authentication, local licensing requirements), contracts, and data/privacy obligations.
  • Negotiate and maintain acquirer/PSP/MSP agreements, ensuring favorable commercials, SLAs, and compliance with card scheme rules.

Treasury and Settlement

• • Collaborate with Treasury/Finance on funding models, settlement currencies, bank accounts/virtual accounts, cash positioning, FX strategy, and reconciliation processes.
  • Optimize settlement timing, fees, and working capital impacts across acquirers and markets.

Commercial Ownership

• • Set and manage commercial objectives for payments acceptance (authorization rate, cost per transaction, chargeback rate, payment method mix, and net revenue uplift).
  • Lead RFPs and benchmark acquirer/PSP pricing, performance, and service; implement a clear acquirer/PSP strategy where appropriate.

Stakeholder Leadership

• • Align cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Legal, Compliance, Treasury, Finance, Risk/Fraud, Operations, and Analytics to deliver initiatives on time and within budget.
  • Establish KPIs and dashboards; communicate performance, insights, and actions to senior leadership.

External Partnerships

• • Manage relationships with card schemes, acquirers, PSPs, gateways, fraud vendors, and wallet/APM providers to unlock incentives, programs, and technical enhancements.
  • Pilot and roll out new payment methods and value-added services (tokenization, installment programs, network incentives, account updater, transaction risk analysis).

Operations and Process Excellence

• • Standardize operating procedures across markets for onboarding, testing, go-live, incident management, and performance reviews.
  • Improve dispute/chargeback processes, evidence standards, and win rates; ensure robust reconciliation and exception handling.

Data, Analytics, and Experimentation

• • Champion data-driven optimization: implement A/B tests for routing, retries, and authentication flows; analyze issuer declines and reason codes.
  • Partner with Analytics to build cohorts and models identifying issuer-specific strategies, MCC impacts, and BIN-level opportunities.

Required Qualifications

• 5–7+ years in payments acquiring/acceptance, card schemes, PSPs, gateways, or merchant payments; experience leading multi-market acceptance programs.
• Strong understanding of card scheme rules, authorization flows, interchange/assessments, pricing models, and dispute/chargeback frameworks.
• Hands-on experience with payment routing, multi-acquirer setups, tokenization, 3DS, fraud tooling, and reconciliation/settlement processes.
• Proven ability to negotiate acquirer/PSP contracts and incentives; manage RFPs and vendor performance.
• Familiarity with regulatory landscapes (e.g., 3DS, PCI DSS, data privacy) and licensing considerations.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills; experience influencing senior leaders.
• Analytical mindset with proficiency in using data to drive decisions; comfort with dashboards and metrics.

Key Performance Indicators

• Authorization/conversion rate uplift by market, issuer, and payment method
• Reduction in cost per transaction and overall acceptance costs
• Chargeback rate and win rate improvements
• Time-to-market for new methods/markets and platform resiliency (failover/uptime)
• Vendor performance against SLAs and realized incentives
• Accuracy and timeliness of reconciliation and settlement processes

What Success Looks Like (12–18 Months)

• Implemented multi-acquirer routing with measurable authorization uplift and cost savings
• Standardized operating procedures and controls across priority markets
• Negotiated improved commercials and incentives with acquirers/PSPs/schemes
• Launched priority payment methods with strong adoption and performance
• Established executive dashboarding with clear KPIs and action plans

Rakuten is an equal opportunities employer and welcomes applications regardless of sex, marital status, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, religious belief, or age.