Purpose of the role
To manage a specific product or portfolio and set the strategic direction. Provide support to the bank's senior management team, and to manage product development risk across the organisation.
Accountabilities
- Development of strategic direction for a specific product or portfolio, including the implementation of up to date methodologies and processes.
- Management of a specific product or portfolio, including oversight of colleagues and their performance, implementation of departmental goals and objectives, oversight of department efficiency and effectiveness.
- Relationship management of specific product or portfolio stakeholders, including identifying relevant stakeholders, and maintenance of the quality of external third party services.
- Development and implementation of policies and procedures for the specific product or portfolio.
- Management of specific product or portfolio risk, including identification of potential risks, development of strategies to mitigate those risks, and maintenance of alignment between the bank’s specific product or portfolio and compliance functions.
- Monitoring the financial performance of the specific product or portfolio, including revenue, profitability, and cost control.
- Conducting thorough market research to understand market trends, competitive landscape, and regulatory changes to identify market opportunities.
Role Overview
Join us as a Senior Product Manager, where you will lead the strategy, optimisation and performance of card payment transactions across Barclaycard's acquiring platforms. You will be responsible for identifying opportunities to improve authorisation approval rates, reduce transaction costs, optimise interchange and scheme fees, and deliver better commercial outcomes for both Barclays and our customers.
Working across product, technology, scheme partners, operations, risk and commercial teams, you will use data-driven insights to shape transaction strategies, influence investment decisions and drive initiatives that improve payment performance at scale. This role sits at the centre of balancing customer experience, commercial value, regulatory requirements and operational effectiveness within a complex, high-volume payments environment.
Company Context
Barclays’ payments acceptance business provides critical infrastructure to the UK economy, processing billions of pounds of payments annually for both small businesses and domestic and international corporate clients. In April 2025, we announced a long-term partnership with Brookfield Asset Management to grow and transform the payments acceptance business. For more information on our partnership with Brookfield, please visit Barclays.com.
Barclays offers a dynamic work environment where colleagues are expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship, and the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive. The role provides the opportunity to lead large-scale payments transformation initiatives within a business undergoing significant strategic growth and investment.
To be successful in this role you will need:
- Experience within card acquiring, payments processing or transaction optimisation.
- Solid understanding of card payment transaction flows, authorisation processes and approval rate drivers.
- Experience analysing payment performance data to identify opportunities for optimisation and commercial improvement.
- Knowledge of interchange, scheme fees, transaction routing and payment economics.
- Experience defining product strategy, roadmaps and business cases, and delivering through cross-functional teams.
- Ability to prioritise initiatives based on customer value, commercial outcomes, operational efficiency and risk.
- Excellent stakeholder management skills with the ability to influence senior leaders and communicate complex trade-offs effectively.
- Experience working in a regulated payments environment with an understanding of scheme and regulatory requirements.
It would be beneficial if you also have:
- Experience working with Visa, Mastercard and other payment schemes on optimisation and performance initiatives.
- Knowledge of authorisation uplift techniques, decline management and transaction routing strategies.
- Experience leveraging data analytics, machine learning or optimisation tools to improve payment performance.
- Exposure to payment processing platforms such as Base24, ACI, RS2 or other issuing/acquiring platforms.
- Experience delivering large-scale payments transformation or modernisation programmes.
- Understanding of emerging payment trends and alternative payment methods.
