Barclays Internal Audit Vice President, Barclaycard Acquiring Payments (Gaia)

Join us as a Barclays Internal Audit Vice President, Barclaycard Acquiring Payments, where you will play a pivotal role in providing independent assurance and insights supporting Barclays’s Acquiring business and its multi-year transformation agenda. You will work as part of an audit team in London delivering impactful audit work across Barclaycard Acquiring Transformation and the UK Corporate Bank issuing businesses.

In this role, you will serve as an audit lead:

1) providing end-to-end assurance for Barclaycard Acquiring Transformation, ensuring robust, timely and insightful audit coverage across customer/merchant lifecycle impacts. You will support the Barclaycard Acquiring Director in defining the audit approach for a multi‑year, enterprise‑critical transformation that modernises Barclaycard Acquiring’s platforms, products, controls, and customer experience. You will coordinate assurance across global and regional BIA teams, partnering closely with Financial Crime, Compliance, Technology, Payments, Operations, Product, Legal, Finance, Risk and Change leaders to assess programme design, execution risks, and emerging control themes.

2) providing end-to-end assurance for UK Corporate Bank issuing business including focusing on ley risks such as Credit and Fraud.

Required Experience and Qualifications

• Proven experience in auditing transformation initiatives within a bank or financial services environment. Experience in payments processes, merchant acquiring, credit card issuing, financial technology (fin tech).
• Proven track records in the ability to lead and manage teams and building relationships with senior management.
• Experience of dealing with the regulators.
• Strong critical thinking, able to challenge transformation decisions, delivery risks, and design assumptions
• Preferably with extensive relevant internal audit/risk and controls experience in an Investment Bank or related financial services.

You may be assessed on key critical skills relevant for success in role, such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen, strategic thinking and digital and technology, as well as job-specific technical skills.

This role will be based in London.

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 by broadening the range of services offered, enhancing the experience for both existing and prospective clients. Leveraging extensive client relationships and deep experience of UK payments, we will create an environment of continuous innovation - activated by Brookfield’s global private equity expertise in payments, technology, operational transformation and corporate carve-outs - to ensure the business is strategically positioned for long-term growth.

Barclays will invest approximately £400m in the new business, the majority of which will be incurred during the first three years. Performance-linked incentives will drive greater alignment between the partners, underpinning the long-term commitment to the transformation. Barclays and Brookfield will work to create a standalone entity over time, continuing to use the Barclaycard Payments brand and acting as the sole payments acceptance services provider to Barclays’ clients for a minimum of ten years. 

For more information on our partnership with Brookfield (programme ‘Gaia’), please visit Barclays.com.

Purpose of the role

To support the development of audits aligned to the bank’s standards and objectives by working collaboratively with colleagues, providing accurate information and recommendations, and complying with policies and procedures.

Accountabilities

• Audit development and delivery support, including financial statements, accounting practices, operational processes, IT systems and risk management.
• Identification of operational risks to support the delivery of the Barclays Internal Audit (BIA) Audit Plan through risk assessments.
• Assessment of internal control effectiveness and their capability to identify and mitigate risk aligned to regulatory requirements.
• Communication of key findings and recommendations to stakeholders, including the Audit Owner, senior managers and directors.
• Identification of regulatory news and industry trends/developments to provide timely insight and recommendations for best practice.

Vice President Expectations

• To contribute or set strategy, drive requirements and make recommendations for change. Plan resources, budgets, and policies; manage and maintain policies/ processes; deliver continuous improvements and escalate breaches of policies/procedures..
• If managing a team, they define jobs and responsibilities, planning for the department’s future needs and operations, counselling employees on performance and contributing to employee pay decisions/changes. They may also lead a number of specialists to influence the operations of a department, in alignment with strategic as well as tactical priorities, while balancing short and long term goals and ensuring that budgets and schedules meet corporate requirements..
• If the position has leadership responsibilities, People Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others..
• OR for an individual contributor, they will be a subject matter expert within own discipline and will guide technical direction. They will lead collaborative, multi-year assignments and guide team members through structured assignments, identify the need for the inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions..
• Advise key stakeholders, including functional leadership teams and senior management on functional and cross functional areas of impact and alignment.
• Manage and mitigate risks through assessment, in support of the control and governance agenda.
• Demonstrate leadership and accountability for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work your team does.
• Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of the organisation functions to contribute to achieving the goals of the business.
• Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategies.
• Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought comparing and selecting complex alternatives. In-depth analysis with interpretative thinking will be required to define problems and develop innovative solutions.
• Adopt and include the outcomes of extensive research in problem solving processes.
• Seek out, build and maintain trusting relationships and partnerships with internal and external stakeholders in order to accomplish key business objectives, using influencing and negotiating skills to achieve outcomes.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.