Merchant Acquiring Financial Crime Policy & Advisory VP

We're seeking an experienced Financial Crime professional with deep Merchant Acquiring expertise to join our BPL Financial Crime Policy & Advisory team.

This is a Second Line of Defence role responsible for providing oversight, challenge and strategic advice across the Payments Acquiring business. Working closely with key stakeholders, you will help shape the financial crime framework supporting merchant relationships, ensuring emerging risks are effectively managed while enabling sustainable business growth.

You will act as a trusted advisor on complex financial crime matters, influence key business decisions, oversee significant change initiatives and remediation programmes, and drive enhancements to policies, controls and risk management practices across the merchant lifecycle. This role requires a strong understanding of the Financial Crime risks unique to Merchant Acquiring, including customer onboarding, payment facilitators, marketplaces, high-risk merchant sectors, transaction flows, sanctions exposure, fraud typologies and evolving regulatory expectations.

This is an opportunity to play a pivotal role in shaping the Financial Crime strategy and control environment of a dynamic Merchant Acquiring business. You'll work at the forefront of emerging Financial Crime risks in payments, partnering with senior leaders to influence decisions, strengthen controls and help protect both our customers and the Bank.

• Provide expert Financial Crime advice, oversight and challenge to the Merchant Acquiring business across strategic initiatives, customer onboarding, customer lifecycle management and product development.
• Serve as a recognised subject matter expert on Merchant Acquiring Financial Crime risks, advising senior stakeholders on emerging threats, regulatory developments and risk management practices.
• Lead the interpretation and implementation of Financial Crime policies, standards and regulatory requirements, ensuring alignment with Barclays risk appetite and regulatory expectations.
• Review and challenge complex merchant onboarding decisions, policy exceptions, high-risk customer escalations and remediation activities.
• Provide Financial Crime oversight of major business change programmes, ensuring risks are identified, assessed and appropriately mitigated.
• Analyse Financial Crime metrics, incidents, control performance and industry trends to identify emerging risks and opportunities for control enhancement.
• Drive improvements to Financial Crime frameworks, customer risk methodologies, governance processes and control environments.
• Produce high-quality management information, thematic reviews and risk insight papers for senior leadership, governance forums and committees.
• Build strong partnerships across the business to influence decision making and promote a culture of proactive risk management.

To be successful as a Merchant Acquiring Financial Crime Policy & Advisory VP, you should have:

• Significant Financial Crime experience within banking, payments or financial services.

• Deep Merchant Acquiring experience is essential
  , with a strong understanding of merchant onboarding, payment acceptance, card acquiring, customer lifecycle management and associated Financial Crime risks.

• Extensive knowledge of AML, Sanctions, Anti-Bribery & Corruption and broader Financial Crime regulatory requirements.

• Demonstrable experience operating within a Second Line Financial Crime, Compliance or Risk function.

• Strong ability to provide effective challenge whilst maintaining constructive relationships with senior stakeholders.

• Experience overseeing complex remediation programmes, regulatory reviews and control enhancement initiatives.

• Advanced analytical skills with the ability to interpret complex data sets and translate them into meaningful risk insights and actions.

• Exceptional stakeholder management, influencing and communication skills.

Some other highly valued skills may include:

• Experience supporting Merchant Acquiring businesses.

• Knowledge of card scheme rules, marketplace and payment facilitator models, and higher-risk merchant segments.

• Professional qualifications such as ICA, ACAMS or equivalent.

• Use…