Product Lead, Card Issuing United Kingdom

We’re Littlepay - a growing fintech headquartered in Melbourne with operations in the UK, EU, LATAM, USA, and Australia. Our payments platform enables our customers to pay for public transport using any payment card, mobile wallet, or wearable device. Processing over USD 1 billion a year in 19 countries and continuing to expand globally, we’re proud to move more people through better payment experiences.

Public transit operators and agencies that work with Littlepay, currently rely on proprietary smart cards (closed-loop) to manage critical programs like corporate travel entitlements (e.g. employer loaded pre-paid travel) and concessionary travel (e.g., discounted or free student passes). These legacy systems are often costly and lack flexibility.

Littlepay is seizing the opportunity to deliver the next generation of transit payment solutions. We are developing a new card issuing product built on established bank card issuing standards. This innovation will displace proprietary smart card programs, allowing agencies to issue modern, flexible cards that meet the specific needs of the transit industry while significantly lowering operational complexity and cost. Our direction is to partner with established fintech platforms in the BaaS, CaaS and embedded finance ecosystems to deliver a world class implementation without long development cycles.

This role is open to candidates residing in London or on the US East Coast.

At Littlepay, our mission is to move more people through better payment experiences. This drives our passion to make payment journeys effortless, whether in-person via contactless physical or digital cards or online via web and mobile checkouts. Our Product team is central to achieving this ambitious vision.

As the Product Lead for Littlepay’s Issuing offering, you will define and drive the strategy for this new product from inception through to market launch. This role combines strategic ownership with hands‑on execution. You will spend your time engaging externally with customers and partners to understand their needs and co‑design solutions, while also collaborating internally with Commercial and Product teams to shape roadmaps, refine requirements, and ensure alignment across the business.

The measure of your success will be simple and transparent: the launch of card programs that displace the proprietary smart cards in public transit.

• Running workshops with Littlepay customers to understand uses‑cases for card issuing currently being serviced through smart‑card (closed loop) programs
• Designing end‑to‑end user journeys as the basis of a minimum viable open‑loop Issuing product
• Establishing and negotiating new commercial models in the prepaid ecosystem appropriate for the transit use case. Validating the commercial and technical viability of the proposition with customers
• Evaluating alternative platforms that can be leveraged to accelerate a Littlepay Issuing product offering, and minimise the need for development
• Collaborate with customers to deploy a number of POC Issuing programs that can evolve to full
• Optimising customer onboarding, card lifecycle management, and operational workflows in collaboration with compliance and support teams
• Ensuring all product features and processes meet relevant regulatory and scheme compliance requirements
• Work cross functionally with our internal teams to define, build, deploy and commercialise products that delight our customers
• Devise strategy, product roadmap, and oversee execution of initiatives to grow and expand from initial pilot programs to a global product

Ideally, you’ll have:

• 10+ years as a product manager
• 5+ year experience in the card issuing ecosystem, preferably in a modern fintech with a platform and API products
• Strong understanding of card issuing (prepaid, debit, credit), BIN sponsorship, card processing, and network (Visa, Mastercard) requirements.
• Strong working knowledge of card scheme requirements, issuer processor integrations, and compliance frameworks (KYC, AML, PCI‑DSS, PSD2)
• Experience leading cross‑team initiatives from ideation to execution
• Technical expertise:
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