Director, Merchant & Partner Servicing – BPL

Director, Merchant & Partner Servicing – BPL

Overview / Job Summary

Own the service. Lead the experience. Drive growth through operations.

Barclaycard Payments Limited is building a standalone, customer-first payments business designed for pace, growth and long-term sustainability.

This role will lead how we serve and retain our merchants and partners, owning the end-to-end servicing experience across the lifecycle and ensuring delivery of simple, reliable and scalable support that drives both customer outcomes and commercial value.

Purpose of the Role

Lead and run Merchant & Partner Servicing, accountable for delivering consistently excellent customer outcomes across all channels while building a modern, efficient and scalable servicing operation.

Balance running today’s business with transforming for the future, embedding new capabilities, improving performance and enabling growth.

Key Accountabilities

• Own the end‑to‑end servicing experience across digital, telephony and partner‑led channels, driving consistency, quality and resolution across all touchpoints including complaints
• Embedding clear ownership of customer resolution, evolving services and enabling growth and retention.
• Deliver best‑in‑class service performance across resolution, customer satisfaction and efficiency, using data‑led KPIs to drive improvement, reduce cost to serve through simplification and automation, and build a scalable model to support significant growth.
• Lead the embedding of a multi‑year transformation agenda into live operations, partnering with Transformation & Change, Product, Technology and Operational Readiness to launch new products, implement platforms and develop agentic AI.
• Lead a multi‑layered servicing organisation, setting clear direction and expectations while building a high‑performance culture, developing leaders and ensuring effective workforce planning, productivity and delivery quality.
• Ensure strong adherence to regulatory requirements and internal policies by embedding robust risk and control practices, proactively identifying and addressing risks, and balancing customer outcomes with safe, compliant growth.
• Partner closely with Sales, Product, Technology, Risk and Transformation to align servicing to business strategy, influencing senior stakeholders and acting as the lead voice for customer and operations in key strategic forums.

Skills and Experience

• Deep operations leadership experience of working in payment acquiring, FinTech, E-Pay
• Strong transformation and digital enablement experience
• Experience in risk and control environments
• Strong stakeholder influencing skills
• Commercial and customer focus
• Coaching, developing and maturing the culture of operations

What success looks like

• Consistently strong customer outcomes across all servicing channels
• Measurable improvement in NPS, resolution times and first contact resolution.
• Continuous improvement of complaints root cause process optimization and ongoing effective management of new and aged complaints.
• Clear reduction in cost to serve through digital and automation.
• Seamless embedding of new products, platforms and capabilities into live operations.
• A scalable, resilient servicing model supporting future business growth.
• A high‑performing, engaged servicing organisation with strong leadership depth.

Why this role

A pivotal leadership role at the heart of a newly formed payments business, shaping how we serve merchants and partners at scale through a modern, customer-first servicing model.

This is a rare opportunity to lead a critical function end to end, with real scope to shape the operating model, influence strategic decisions and improve customer and commercial outcomes.

You will lead both customer and partner servicing running a key operation today that delivers on customer needs and business expectations, while building the capabilities, and ways of working needed for future growth.

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 (BPL) 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, please visit Barclays.com.

Purpose of the role

To manage the people, processes and technologies in the IT function to ensure they deliver outcomes that support the goals of the business.  

Accountabilities

• Development and implementation of technology strategies, ensuring technology investments are enablers for business success – i.e. improve efficiency, support growth, innovation, and risk management.
• Strategic leadership to the business on all technology matters, working with subject matter experts across the Group Technology organisation, such as infrastructure, service management and architecture.  .
• Alignment to global data governance frameworks to ensure data quality, security, and privacy, encouraging data-driven decision making by leveraging data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to extract insights and inform business strategies.
• Implementation of technology practices according to security, compliance and regulatory requirements, and is kept current. Implementation of work in accordance with policies and controls and are actively managing risks.  .
• Digital transformation/change projects, programmes and initiatives, modernising legacy systems new and enhanced digital solutions to enable customers, clients and colleagues.   .
• Management of the technology team includes hiring, training, mentoring, and setting and achieving team goals and ensuring that the technology team have the resources and support they need to be successful.
• Management of the technology budgets, ensuring appropriate prioritisation of resources, ensuring investments in technology support overall business goals, and that costs are optimised, and efficiencies are delivered, where required, ensuring financial risks associated with technology are mitigated.

Director Expectations

• Provide expert advice to senior functional management and committees to influence decisions made outside of own function, offering significant input to function wide strategic initiatives.
• Manage, coordinate and enable resourcing, budgeting and policy creation for a significant sub-function.
• Escalates breaches of policies / procedure appropriately.
• Foster and guide compliance, ensure regulations are observed that relevant processes in place to facilitate adherence.
• Focus on the external environment, regulators, or advocacy groups to both monitor and influence on behalf of Barclays, when appropriate.
• Demonstrate extensive knowledge of how the function integrates with the business division / Group to achieve the overall business objectives.
• Maintain broad and comprehensive knowledge of industry theories and practices within own discipline alongside up-to-date relevant sector / functional knowledge, and insight into external market developments / initiatives.
• Use interpretative thinking and advanced analytical skills to solve problems and design solutions in often complex/ sensitive situations.
• Exercise management authority to make significant decisions and certain strategic decisions or recommendations within own area.
• Negotiate with and influence stakeholders at a senior level both internally and externally.
• Act as principal contact point for key clients and counterparts in other functions/ businesses divisions.
• Mandated as a spokesperson for the function and business division.

All Senior 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.

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.