Senior Director: Head of Acquirer Advisory Practice, VCA, Asia Pacific

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.

Team Summary

Visa Consulting & Analytics (VCA) is Visa's client-facing advisory division, serving Visa's clients (including card issuers, fintechs, acquirers, merchants, and governments) and solving their strategic problems linked to payments, money movement, cards, customer experience, personalization, profitability, etc. Drawing on our expertise in strategy consulting, payments, data analytics, marketing, operational and macroeconomics, VCA drives high impact and tangible financial results. In Asia Pacific (AP), VCA has 2 types of teams – (1) Geographically focused team – that serve our clients within a geography and (2) MSC (Market Support Center) Practices team – who partner with our geographically focused teams to curate thought-leadership, build new solutions & playbooks and advance our thinking and execution on a specific topic (e.g., risk, technology, merchant acquiring, etc.)

This role is in the MSC Practice Team to lead our Acquirer advisory practice for Asia Pacific.

What a Senior Director, Head of Acquirer Practice does at Visa:

We are looking for an individual who will set and execute the roadmap for future growth of the Acquirer advisory practice. This includes:

• Thought leadership: Track and articulate key thematic trends in merchant acquiring, both internally within Visa and externally in industry forums. Establish credibility for Visa as an "advisor" to stakeholders involved in merchant acquiring
• Build solutions / playbooks: Define consulting / advisory solutions that allow acquirers to solve strategy and execution related business problems linked to growth, profitability, etc.
• Client selection: Partner with Visa teams (geographically focused VCA teams, account teams, product teams, etc.) to identify priority clients for go-to-market
• Go-to-market / business development: Partner with geographically focused VCA team to proactively pitch solutions / playbooks to priority clients, and drive conversion of advisory projects to meet advisory targets for practice area
• Project delivery: Selectively oversee project delivery (esp. for first-to-market topics, high priority accounts, etc.) to influence execution quality and client outcomes
• Client outcomes: Actively track client outcomes from advisory projects, and package communication to share results both internally within Visa and externally with industry stakeholders
• Team building: Attract high-performing talent (from a variety of background – acquiring practitioners, consultants, etc.) to build MSC Practice team, and also influence hiring of acquiring talent in geographically focused VCA team
• Build community of experts: Build & nurture relationships (internally and externally) to develop a community of acquiring experts within Asia Pacific and across other Visa regions to advance the thinking on this topic

Why this is important to Visa

VCA is part of Visa VAS (Value-Added Services) business unit and is one of the fastest businesses within Visa and VAS. Given Visa's global network and depth of relationships with financial institutions around the world, VCA is well-positioned to engage senior client stakeholders on a wide variety of topics and advance their business agenda. This not only help Visa generate VAS revenues but also further deepens the link between Visa and its clients. VCA continues to grow rapidly by deepening and showcasing topic expertise in new areas such as Agentic AI, cyber risk, etc. This role will help VCA Asia Pacific strengthen its expertise in merchant acquiring and become a more holistic advisory partner to its clients.

What you will need

The ideal candidate will have already accumulated 2 key experiences – (1) Practitioners knowledge of running and scaling a merchant acquiring business in Asia Pacific and (2) background in consulting. In particular, we are looking for the following thematic attributes:

• Ideal candidate will have 15+ years' relevant experience – most of it in merchant acquiring business with a large financial institution and some experience with a top-tier management consulting firm
• A combination of regional and global experience is strongly desired
• Strong consulting toolkit: hypothesis-driven problem solving, written / verbal communication skills, analytics mindset
• Strong executive presence and track record of managing senior client relationships
• Strong commercial acumen, with experience in working on business/value cases which prove ROI
• Superior ability to influence people and work across geographies
• Proven ability to drive innovation and lead changes in successful top tier companies
• Willingness to travel (30%+)

At Visa, your individuality fits right in. Working here gives you an opportunity to impact the world, invest in your career growth, and be part of an inclusive and diverse workplace. We are a global team of disruptors, trailblazers, innovators and risk-takers who help drive economic growth in even the most remote parts of the world, creatively moving the industry forward, and doing meaningful work that brings financial literacy and digital commerce to millions of unbanked and underserved consumers.

You're an Individual. We're the team for you. Together, let's transform the way the world pays.

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.