Merchant Acquiring Financial Crime Policy & Advisory VP

We're seeking an experienced Financial Crime professional with deep Merchant Acquiring expertise to join our BPL Financial Crime Policy & Advisory team.

This is a Second Line of Defence role responsible for providing oversight, challenge and strategic advice across the Payments Acquiring business. Working closely with key stakeholders, you will help shape the financial crime framework supporting merchant relationships, ensuring emerging risks are effectively managed while enabling sustainable business growth.

You will act as a trusted advisor on complex financial crime matters, influence key business decisions, oversee significant change initiatives and remediation programmes, and drive enhancements to policies, controls and risk management practices across the merchant lifecycle. This role requires a strong understanding of the Financial Crime risks unique to Merchant Acquiring, including customer onboarding, payment facilitators, marketplaces, high-risk merchant sectors, transaction flows, sanctions exposure, fraud typologies and evolving regulatory expectations. This is an opportunity to play a pivotal role in shaping the Financial Crime strategy and control environment of a dynamic Merchant Acquiring business. You'll work at the forefront of emerging Financial Crime risks in payments, partnering with senior leaders to influence decisions, strengthen controls and help protect both our customers and the Bank.

Key Accountabilities

• Provide expert Financial Crime advice, oversight and challenge to the Merchant Acquiring business across strategic initiatives, customer onboarding, customer lifecycle management and product development.
• Serve as a recognised subject matter expert on Merchant Acquiring Financial Crime risks, advising senior stakeholders on emerging threats, regulatory developments and risk management practices.
• Lead the interpretation and implementation of Financial Crime policies, standards and regulatory requirements, ensuring alignment with Barclays risk appetite and regulatory expectations.
• Review and challenge complex merchant onboarding decisions, policy exceptions, high-risk customer escalations and remediation activities.
• Provide Financial Crime oversight of major business change programmes, ensuring risks are identified, assessed and appropriately mitigated.
• Analyse Financial Crime metrics, incidents, control performance and industry trends to identify emerging risks and opportunities for control enhancement.
• Drive improvements to Financial Crime frameworks, customer risk methodologies, governance processes and control environments.
• Produce high-quality management information, thematic reviews and risk insight papers for senior leadership, governance forums and committees.
• Build strong partnerships across the business to influence decision making and promote a culture of proactive risk management.

To be successful as a Merchant Acquiring Financial Crime Policy & Advisory VP, you should have:

• Significant Financial Crime experience within banking, payments or financial services.

• Deep Merchant Acquiring experience is essential, with a strong understanding of merchant onboarding, payment acceptance, card acquiring, customer lifecycle management and associated Financial Crime risks.

• Extensive knowledge of AML, Sanctions, Anti-Bribery & Corruption and broader Financial Crime regulatory requirements.

• Demonstrable experience operating within a Second Line Financial Crime, Compliance or Risk function.

• Strong ability to provide effective challenge whilst maintaining constructive relationships with senior stakeholders.

• Experience overseeing complex remediation programmes, regulatory reviews and control enhancement initiatives.

• Advanced analytical skills with the ability to interpret complex data sets and translate them into meaningful risk insights and actions.

• Exceptional stakeholder management, influencing and communication skills.

Some other highly valued skills may include:

• Experience supporting Merchant Acquiring businesses.

• Knowledge of card scheme rules, marketplace and payment facilitator models, and higher-risk merchant segments.

• Professional qualifications such as ICA, ACAMS or equivalent.

• Use of Data Analytics

You may be assessed on key critical skills relevant for success in the 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 or Northampton.

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 provide data-led expert oversight and check and challenge on business and compliance matters to evidence that the organisation is operating in a compliance with Barclays legal, regulatory and ethical responsibilities. 

Accountabilities

• Identification and assessment of compliance risks through thorough reviews of business activities, changes, processes, testing and systems to.
• Identification and investigation of potential market abuse, including but not limited to, Insider Dealing, Unlawful Disclosure, Market Manipulation or Anti-Competitive Conduct.
• Conduct investigation of compliance risk events or breaches. Oversight and check and challenge of corrective actions and preventative measures to avoid future occurrences.
• Implementation of compliance policies and procedures in line with regulatory requirements and ensuring that the bank’s internal policies are aligned with international standards, including jurisdictional requirements.
• Collaboration with 1LOD, other relevant Compliance teams and legal, and relevant risk management functions to facilitate a comprehensive approach to compliance and risk management.
• Identification, investigation and oversight of potential money laundering, terrorist financing or other financial crime.

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.