WeTravel

Head of Payment Risk and Operations

WeTravel

full-time

Posted on:

Origin:  • 🇺🇸 United States • Illinois

Visit company website
✨ AI Apply
Manual Apply

Salary

💰 $140,000 - $160,000 per year

Job Level

Lead

About the role

  • Hi! 👋 I'm Zaky, Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at WeTravel 🇳🇱🇮🇩 Over the past 11 years, I’ve focused on building the leading vertical SaaS for the $300B multi-day travel segment, helping tour companies manage their operations from A to Z.
  • Multi-day travel businesses (think 7-day safari in the Serengeti or 5-day scuba diving in the Galapagos) use WeTravel as their all-in-one platform to manage sales processes, collect payments, and run the back office.
  • We monetize as a vertical SaaS for these multi-day travel businesses through transaction volume. This is possible because our clients trust WeTravel as their agent of payees, accepting payments from travelers on behalf of the travel businesses. WeTravel also acts as the merchant of record, processing the payments and handling the chargebacks. Therefore, it is undeniably essential that we protect our user funds from any bad actors, while ensuring that the funds move smoothly from pay-in (travelers) to payout (travel businesses and their suppliers).
  • You will join the company at a pivotal moment. As the company scales and transacts billions of USD, we have transformed from a SaaS company to a payment/fintech company. These people below, including yourself, will work closely on any payment-related topic:
  • Product Manager - Payments & Engineering Manager - Payments: product and technical matters of payments
  • COO: commercial and compliance matters of payments
  • You (alongside your KYC and Payment Operations teams): risk and operational matters of payments
  • Therefore, you will shape our payment risk management strategy and roll up your sleeves to immediately implement the short-term actions with the CEO's and COO's full support, so we can safely and responsibly grow our transaction volume and revenue.
  • Your mission is to ensure our user funds flow securely and smoothly from pay-in to payout while considering our ambitious growth and revenue plans. To do that, you have to drive two things:
  • Payment Risk & Fraud Management: Identifying all the risks and vulnerabilities from pay-in to payout, and ensuring we are protected against any potential bad actors; Performing robust due diligence and risk assessment on new and existing clients; Running a rapid escalation process for payment fraud incidents
  • Payment Operations: Manage disputes/chargebacks and fund recovery from delinquent accounts; Resolve any operational issues on pay-in and payout process that still require coordination with PSPs/payment service providers, e.g., wire issues.
  • We have built the foundation to ensure user funds can flow securely and smoothly from pay-in to payout. Until now, the COO and Chief of Staff have jointly managed the teams and tools for this. Moving forward, you will take over to manage and build: In-house KYC/KYB and Payment Operations teams; Tools, e.g., Persona for KYC/KYB automation, Stripe’s Radar for fraud prevention; Additionally, the CEO and COO are very involved in monitoring the security of our user funds daily, and working closely with company leaders, including Product and Engineering, to take whatever action is needed to keep the funds safe and secure.
  • Your Daily Activities: Develop a payment risk management strategy; Manage the daily operations of the KYC/KYB and Payment Operations teams, and possibly a new Risk/Compliance team based on the strategy above; Monitor any red flags of possible fraud/scam/account takeover, and escalate with any relevant stakeholders; Coordinate case management and communication of fraud incidents; Help the Payment Operations team coordinate with PSPs to resolve any operational payment issues, e.g., the supplier hasn’t received the paid-out funds due to additional compliance documentation needed by the beneficiary bank; Review accounts with negative balances due to chargebacks, and work with the Payment Operations team to recover the funds; Build dashboards, with support from Business Intelligence/Product/Engineering teams, to evaluate the risk score of any client and transaction; Update the list of Prohibited Businesses based on requirements from PSPs and directions from the CEO and COO; Review the new KYC/KYB SOP on a new segment that the sales team is considering to approach; Work with the COO to provide compliance documents to PSPs; Manage the filing process of 1099K forms for applicable clients annually.

Requirements

  • Have 10+ years of experience in payment risks/operations or fraud management
  • Are a payment nerd: you have experience working for PSPs or closely with them, and you enjoy learning about the payment industry
  • Have experience with both the US and non-US markets; while we have tour operator clients worldwide, most of the payments still originate from the US
  • Have an “owner” mentality: you care so much about your team and your customers, and you are obsessed with fighting any form of fraudsters
  • Are an effective team leader and communicator: you will run a team of more than 10 people, including two direct reports who lead KYC and Payment Operations teams, and work regularly with all C-suite members
  • Having knowledge of the travel industry is a plus, but not required