Specialist, Digital Payments

Company Description

foodpanda is part of the Delivery Hero Group, the world's pioneering local delivery platform, our mission is to deliver an amazing experience—fast, easy, and to your door. We operate in over 70+ countries worldwide. Headquartered in Berlin, Germany. Delivery Hero has been listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since 2017 and is part of the MDAX stock market index.

Job Description

About the Role

As the world's pioneering local delivery platform, our mission is to deliver an amazing experience, fast, easy, and to your door. We operate in over 70+ countries worldwide, powered by tech, designed by people. As one of Europe's largest tech platforms, headquartered in Berlin, Germany, Delivery Hero has been listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since 2017 and is part of the MDAX stock market index. We enable creative minds to deliver solutions that create impact within our global ecosystem. We move fast, take action and adapt. No matter where you're from or what you believe in, we build, we deliver, we lead. We are Delivery Hero.

As Delivery Hero grows and scales its global payments business and strategy, we're looking for a data-driven, commercially-minded Payments Specialist to join our Regional Payments Acceptance team that serves 3 Brands - foodpanda, Foodora and Yemeksepeti across 18 countries globally.

You'll act as the regional point person for strategic and commercial payments initiatives—leading partner discovery, RFPs, business case development, and contract negotiations, while influencing cross-functional stakeholders and local teams to drive measurable cost and performance improvements across our payments network.

This role sits at the intersection of strategy, partnerships, and operations—offering a unique opportunity to influence how Delivery Hero collaborates with global and regional payment providers.

This role will directly influence Delivery Hero's global payment strategy by optimizing transaction costs and enhancing provider performance through strategic partner management and data-driven initiatives. By owning the Cost Per Order (CPO) OKR and leading local and regional RFPs, the Payments Specialist will drive measurable impact on the company's bottom line and enable scalable, cost-efficient payment operations across all markets.

Key Responsibilities

Commercial & Strategic Partnership Management

• Conduct market scans for new local and global payment partners (processors, acquirers, schemes, wallets, etc.)
• Support RFP processes for both regional and global PSPs and PMs
• Build robust business cases for onboarding or scaling providers and products (e.g. new acquirers, alternative payment methods, tokenisation feature)
• Manage global and regional contract negotiation processes in alignment with Legal, Procurement, and Finance teams
• Collaborate closely with the regional teams on platform cost and budget alignment initiatives

Relationship Management & Partnership reviews

• Own operational cadence with global partners (e.g. , Adyen, MPGS) leveraging them to drive business and financial performance
• Support preparation and execution of periodic business reviews with key providers
• Align internal and external roadmaps to ensure timely access to new features, capabilities, and mandates

Payments Cost Ownership & Optimisation

• Champion the global Cost Per Order (CPO) metric across payments acceptance—driving visibility, alignment, and accountability across regions and functions. While not owning dedicated resources, success in this role depends on influencing roadmaps, mobilizing cross-functional teams, and leading initiatives that improve cost efficiency at scale
• Forecast and establish global payment cost structures and future performance, including for annual budgeting cycles.
• Proactively identify cost-saving opportunities across regions (e.g., routing changes, feature adoption, commercial renegotiations) and influence regional and local teams to prioritize and execute on them. Escalate when targets are off track and co-develop alternative paths to delivery.
• Identify cost inefficiencies and opportunities through granular analysis of transaction patterns, routing strategy improvements, and commercial renegotiations.
• Collaborate with Product, Operations, and Strategy stakeholders to ensure Payments cost initiatives are considered in roadmap planning, feature rollouts, and partner discussions.
• Compile and present companywide Payments cost performance – including influencing factors and key initiatives - in business reviews with senior and executive stakeholders.

Cross-functional Collaboration

• Partner with Product, Tech, Legal, Compliance and Finance to ensure seamless implementation of new contracts and commercial terms
• Align closely with Operational and Strategic counterparts to ensure full lifecycle management of provider relationships
• Feed commercial feedback into Product and Ops prioritization cycle

Qualifications

• 2–4 years of experience in payments, fintech, partnerships, or commercial strategy—ideally in a tech-driven or platform business
• Strong understanding of the global payments ecosystem (PSPs, acquirers, schemes, digital wallets, etc.)
• Excellent stakeholder management and contract negotiation skills
• Analytical and structured thinker with experience building data-backed, ROI-driven business cases
• Strong communicator, able to translate complexity into clear action plans. Fluent in verbal and written English
• Comfortable navigating ambiguous, cross-functional environments

Additional Information

Why You'll Love This Role

You'll join a high-impact global team at the center of Delivery Hero's fintech strategy. With exposure to both commercial and operational domains, you'll shape how payments perform at scale for millions of customers. Plus, you'll work alongside some of the smartest minds in global payments—and you'll help architect what comes next.