Payment Optimisation Manager - Military veterans preferred

The Economist is looking for a seasoned Payment Optimisation Lead to own and evolve the end-to-end payments experience. This is a hybrid role that blends product management, operational excellence, and commercial strategy, working across business, data, engineering, finance, and third-party vendors to drive payment performance across the subscriber lifecycle.

About the role:

You will lead the strategy and execution of payment optimisation across acquisition and retention journeys globally. Your core mission will be to increase payment success, reduce involuntary churn, improve operational health, and drive cost efficiency. You will need a deep understanding of the payments ecosystem (including 3DS, network tokens, retry logic, vaulting, and orchestration), regulatory compliance, and a passion for data-driven iteration.

This is a hands-on role requiring a strategic mindset, technical fluency, and commercial acumen. You'll work closely with gateway partners, acquirers, card schemes, internal product teams, finance, marketing and data analysts to ensure our payment stack is resilient, innovative, and aligned with business goals.

You'll be joining a friendly, inclusive product team who are empowered to shape their ways of working, refine processes, and deeply care about developing each other's capabilities

Responsibilities:

• Own and continuously improve the end-to-end payments experience and roadmap across acquisition and retention journeys, optimising for authorisation success, cost efficiency, and customer experience.
• Analyse qualitative and quantitative data from multiple payment platforms to identify performance trends, flag anomalies, and propose data-backed actions that drive business impact.
• Stay on top of global payments regulations, card scheme rules, and industry developments (e.g. PCI-DSS, PSD2, network tokenisation) to ensure compliance and future readiness.
• Drive strategic initiatives such as smart retries, fallback orchestration, and alternative payment methods (e.g. wallets, open banking), building business cases and overseeing delivery from design to launch.
• Own the performance relationships with PSPs, acquirers, and fraud vendors; lead QBRs, interpret SLAs, and escalate or negotiate commercial terms as needed.
• Configure and test payment stack features, including vaults, network tokens, fraud rules, and 3DS settings, to ensure an optimal balance between acceptance rates and fraud prevention.
• Collaborate with marketing, product, engineering, finance, legal, and data teams to execute payment initiatives that align with product, commercial and operational goals.
• Ensure operational excellence by conducting daily and monthly monitoring of KPIs across platforms such as CYBS, Stripe, and Adyen; escalate and act on irregularities promptly.
• Document and lead compliance efforts, including PCI user access reviews, audit prep, and implementation of regulatory bulletins or scheme mandates.
• Maintain hands-on fluency with systems such as Zuora, Snowflake and Tableau to extract and interpret data, validate business cases, and test changes across payment journeys.

Youll Bring

• Proven track record in payment optimisation, with hands-on experience managing recurring billing and smart retry strategies, ideally on the merchant side within a subscription-based business model.
• Deep knowledge of card scheme rules, fraud tools (e.g. Decision Manager), and payment regulations (e.g. PSD2, PCI, 3DS2).
• Experience with network tokenisation, orchestration, vaulting, smart retries, and fallback routing.
• Strong vendor management and negotiation skills.
• Proficiency in analysing large volumes of transactional data and extracting actionable insights.
• Familiarity with platforms such as Zuora, Snowflake, Tableau, and payment gateways (CYBS, Stripe, Adyen).
• A hands-on, proactive, and collaborative approach with an ability to work across technical and commercial domains.

Ideal Candidate

• Product-oriented thinker: Able to define long-term solutions with measurable outcomes.
• Analytical operator: Data-driven and confident in managing complex payment datasets.
• Curious and strategic: Constantly seeking out innovation and value in payment ecosystems.
• Team player: Works well with cross-functional teams, from tech and finance to legal and data.
• Customer-centric: Understands how payment success impacts retention and user experience.

Why Join Us?

This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of a global subscription brand at the intersection of technology, product, and payments. Youll play a pivotal role in how we serve millions of readers globally, ensuring seamless, compliant, and high-performing payment experiences that underpin The Economists growth and retention ambitions.

Location:

This role is based in our London office: The Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, Embankment, London, WC2

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