Counsel, Legal

Visa is a world leader in payments and technology, with over 259 billion payments transactions flowing safely between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities in more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable, and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive while driven by a common purpose – to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

Make an impact with a purpose-driven industry leader. Join us today and experience Life at Visa.

Job Description

Team Summary

The Visa Asia Pacific Legal team manages Visa's legal affairs in the Asia Pacific region. Our team provides advice and services to ensure business goals are successfully met and that Visa's brand and reputation are protected while minimizing legal liability and regulatory risk. Our vision entails each legal professional living the guiding principles to be a proactive partner who never loses sight of his or her responsibility to protect the company.

What a Counsel (Technology) Asia Pacific in Legal does at Visa:

The position is for a highly motivated and skilled attorney to join Visa's growing legal team. You will be a key commercial legal lead supporting both existing as well as exciting new technology offerings/partnership. In this role, you will be exposed to a broad range of product, regulatory and commercial legal work. You must be exceptionally intelligent, have top of the line legal skills, and yet have a commercial mindset.

You will report to the Vice President Legal (Asia Pacific) in the first instance (although reporting lines may change) and will be expected to work closely and in collaboration with Visa lawyers and business/stakeholder functions across other geographies, including from the US headquarters. You must possess the necessary skills and thought leadership to navigate new grounds for Visa as the business scales rapidly across separate business lines and continues to explore new models of payment technologies and experiences.

You should have a good working knowledge of laws and regulations applicable to payments services, including different wallet models, tokenization, and be able to scale this to embrace evolving new technologies such as (but not limited to) agentic commerce as embedded in new payment experiences. You need to be comfortable with leading and strategizing new contracting models for innovative technology, and be able to pivot quickly and effectively to respond to ever changing business needs and circumstances. You must be well versed in commercial, technology and IP laws, and be able to apply this experience to your role in Visa by being a sound and practical legal advisor to the business. You must have excellent risk judgment and analytical capability, and be a strong and efficient communicator, with the ability to juggle multiple priorities in a fast paced and challenging, but rewarding, environment.

In this role, you are expected to:

• Be the lead counsel designing, structuring and developing technology contracts for current and new offerings. This will involve modifying existing contracts and tailoring them to be fit for purpose.
• Assist with regulatory consultations and compliance with regulations across the region as applicable to existing or new Visa products or initiatives.
• Assist with regulatory issues relating to products, services or functions.
• Draft, negotiate and drive to completion complex commercial, technology, or strategic partnership agreements in support of business objectives.
• Provide advice and guidance to business and product teams regarding deal structures and key risks and proactively identify and resolve legal issues as well as risks.
• Travel internationally as needed.
• Possess strong inter-personal skills including the ability to communicate complex legal issues (and relevant solutions or recommendations), clearly and practically to the business.

Why this is important to Visa

The Counsel will play a key role as a trusted advisor to our products business that represent some of the most important pillars of Visa's future growth and strategy. This role is critical in ensuring that both contract drafting and negotiations are managed efficiently with relevant stakeholders while enabling our business to innovate and push across new frontiers (particularly in the fast-evolving global payments industry).

The Counsel can look forward to being a key representative of a high performing Legal team in advising and managing projects that drive innovation and development within the payments industry.

Projects you will be a part of:

You will be a member of a regional legal team that works at the cutting edge of new payment technologies, innovation and the fintech industry in an increasingly regulated environment, which brings unique and novel challenges in the commercial or technology law space.

This is a hybrid position. Expectation of days in office will be confirmed by your hiring manager.

What you will need:

We are looking for a strong lawyer who brings of breadth of experience and knowledge of the industry and our business. As a candidate, you should:

• Have 8-10 years PQE in technology related transactions experience, some of which must be at a top tier law firm or MNC
• Be able to work independently and interface with executive level stakeholders with little or no supervision, but also be a good team player
• Be a practical and proactive problem-solver, must have a strong business acumen and be confident, mature and calm under fire
• Demonstrate the ability to communicate clearly and concisely with multiple stakeholders including senior executives.
• Demonstrate an ability to manage and drive complex commercial and technology transactions, including international and regional deals.
• Have good working knowledge of laws and regulations applicable to financial, digital and payments services, in multiple jurisdictions in Asia.
• Have excellent legal analytical skills with the ability to integrate legal advice and business knowledge, while providing balanced advice regarding risks and benefits.
• Be admitted to practice in a Commonwealth jurisdiction.

Visa is an EEO Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.