Director Merchant Services & Compliance

Director Merchant Services & Compliance | Remote

The Director, Merchant Services supports the Vice President, Debt Management and Treasury Operations and helps lead the enterprise merchant services program for a large, complex healthcare system operating 47 hospitals and hundreds of ambulatory/health service offices across five states and international. This role is accountable for the strategy, governance, performance, and daily operations of card and digital payment acceptance across all patient, retail, and ancillary revenue channels (in-person, online, mobile, and recurring payments).

The Director partners closely with Revenue Cycle, Patient Financial Services, IT, Information Security, Compliance/Privacy, Supply Chain, and Operations to deliver a secure, reliable, and cost-effective acceptance ecosystem—optimizing the patient payment experience while minimizing risk, ensuring compliance, and improving cash flow.

Program Leadership & Governance:

• Own the enterprise merchant services program, including roadmap, policies/standards, and operating model across hospitals, clinics, and international locations.
• Establish and maintain governance for merchant account setup, device standards, processor/acquirer relationships, fee structures, chargeback/dispute handling, and exception management.
• Serve as the primary Treasury liaison for payment acceptance strategy, ensuring alignment with broader cash management and treasury priorities.

Payment Acceptance Operations:

• Oversee day-to-day merchant operations, including onboarding new locations/merchant IDs, terminal and gateway provisioning, payment channel support, and incident/escalation management.
• Ensure seamless integration and uptime across systems such as EHR/PM platforms, patient portals, payment gateways, IVR/call center payments, and point-of-sale solutions.
• Works with Rev Cycle to maintain documented procedures and controls for settlements, reconciliation, refunds, voids, and adjustments—ensuring timely and accurate posting to GL and patient accounting systems.

Financial Performance & Optimization:

• Analyze and optimize end-to-end costs of acceptance (interchange, assessments, processor/acquirer fees, gateway fees, device costs, and third-party tools).
• Assist the VP in pricing and contract negotiations; develop business cases for new capabilities (e.g., tokenization, network tokens, APMs, digital wallets, account updater).
• Establish KPIs and dashboards (authorization rates, decline reasons, chargeback ratios, fraud losses, refund cycle time, settlement timing, uptime, cost per transaction).

Risk, Compliance, and Controls (Healthcare Environment):

• Partners closely with Information Security efforts to maintain compliance with applicable payment standards and internal controls (e.g., PCI DSS, data protection/privacy requirements, segmentation and secure payment flows).
• Partner with Information Security and Compliance to implement tokenization, encryption, secure key management, and vendor risk management practices.
• In partnership with Rev Cycle, oversee chargeback/dispute processes, fraud mitigation tools, and monitoring controls to reduce losses and operational risk.

Vendor & Stakeholder Management:

• Manage relationships with acquirers, processors, payment gateways, POS vendors, device providers, and fraud/dispute platforms.
• Coordinate cross-functional stakeholders (Revenue Cycle, IT, Security, Compliance, Finance, Operations) to ensure successful implementations and adoption.
• Drive service-level expectations and performance reviews; resolve complex operational issues and ensure accountability.

Projects & Continuous Improvement:

• Lead enterprise implementations and upgrades (new gateways, device refreshes, e-commerce enhancements, digital wallet rollouts, recurring payment improvements).
• Standardize and simplify merchant services processes across acquired facilities and newly opened locations.
• Promote a patient-friendly payment experience while balancing cost, risk, and compliance requirements.

Team Leadership:

• Manage and develop a team responsible for merchant setup, support, reconciliation, dispute management, and vendor coordination (direct…