Manager, Strategy

The Manager, Payments Strategy will evaluate, develop, and implement modern and effective payment and recovery strategies across the entire Planet Fitness ecosystem, monitor payment processor performance, develop fraud prevention strategy, and drive payment fee optimization across ACH and card rails. The role partners with Technology and Finance leadership to provide data‑driven recommendations on payment architecture and to improve collections rates.

• Design, deliver, and implement end‑to‑end payment attempt strategy including initial charge optimization, retry logic, and recovery workflows across ACH and card rails.
• Develop and maintain a specialized strategy for neobank‑issued accounts (e.g., Chime, Varo, Cash App) including evaluation of alternative payment methods.
• Evaluate and recommend multi‑processor strategy to reduce dependency on a single payment provider and optimize authorization performance.
• Define and optimize member primary payment strategy across ACH and card, including evaluating which payment methods are accepted and incentivized.

• Design and manage multi‑channel dunning strategies (email, SMS, in‑app) tailored to member behavior and return type.
• Analyze involuntary churn data; connect payment failure patterns to member loss and translate recovery curve insights into actionable collections strategy improvements.
• Monitor collections KPIs and drive recovery improvement while maintaining a positive member experience.
• Partner with Billing, Operations and Accounting on write‑off criteria and recommend policy standardization across corporate and franchise groups.
• Ensure payment and collections strategies remain compliant with NACHA requirements and monitor for regulatory changes that require strategy adaptation.

• Own the company’s payment fraud prevention posture, define the strategy, set risk thresholds, and drive continuous improvement as transaction volume and card mix grow.
• Partner with Technology on fraud tooling selection, configuration, and ongoing performance monitoring.
• Build and manage the chargeback program prevention strategy, evidence standards, representment workflows, and win‑rate optimization by tracking dispute rates and chargeback win rates by reason code; identify where representment ROI exceeds write‑off.

• Monitor processor performance, authorization rates, ACH return rates to identify optimization opportunities and drive strategic recommendations.
• Own interchange and fee analysis across card types, payment methods, and routing decisions and flag anomalies and fee reduction opportunities.

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Business, Accounting, or related field.
• 5+ years of experience in finance operations, fintech, or consulting roles.
• Experience in payment economics interchange structures, fee optimization, and processor performance evaluation.
• Chargeback and dispute management experience in reason code analysis, representment strategy, and fraud monitoring.
• Strong analytical capability; comfortable reasoning from return codes, recovery curves, and cohort data.
• Experience in membership, subscription consumer, or franchise businesses.
• Familiarity with payment processors, billing tools, and data visualization tools such as PowerBI.
• Knowledge of fraud‑prevention tools, bank account verification methods, and authentication frameworks.
• Experience with chargeback or representment platforms and pre‑dispute alert services.
• Exposure to SOX‑controlled environments.
• Extremely detail‑oriented, efficient, and organized with an exceptional ability to establish priorities and objectives.
• Excellent presentation and communication skills along with the ability to communicate effectively across all levels of the organization.
• Able to establish and maintain effective, collaborative work relationships with diverse individuals, internally and externally.
• Creative, progressive, thought leadership with the ability to influence at all levels of the organization.
• Excellent leadership skills including the ability to build teams, motivate, guide, and mentor.
• Dedicated learner…