Payments Legal

Barclays is seeking a commercially focused and legally astute Payments Lawyer to join our Global Payments Legal team, one of the most comprehensive payments businesses in the UK. This is a fantastic opportunity to grow your in-house legal career within a dynamic and fast-evolving sector.

The Global Payments Legal team provides strategic legal advice across all payment’s activity within Barclays. We support colleagues on new products and projects, advise on regulatory change and legal risk, and work on transactions with clients and strategic partners.

This role will primarily support the payments acceptance business, with a strong emphasis on: commercial contracts, regulatory change and product development as well drafting and negotiating Master Service Agreements . You’ll play a key role in enabling business growth while ensuring legal and regulatory compliance.

To be successful in this role, you should bring:

• Qualification in English or Commonwealth law with a strong academic record. An Irish law qualification may also be a benefit.
• Understanding of Strong Customer Authentication and relevant Regulatory Technical Standards, and PSD2 generally
• Proven ability to negotiate customer-facing contracts and support new product development in a regulated sector

Some other highly valued skills may include:

• Experience in financial services, merchant acquiring, or IT-related commercial contracts
• Experience of managing cross border legal and regulatory challenges
• Strong communication and influencing skills, both technical and non-technical
• Commercial mindset and strategic thinking
• Willingness to take on varied tasks and expand into new legal areas

You may also be assessed on key critical skills such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen, strategic thinking, and digital and technology awareness.

This role will be based in Northampton.

Purpose of the role

To ensure that the payment activities are conducted in compliance with applicable laws and regulations, and to help the bank manage legal risks associated with these activities. 

Accountabilities

• Development and implementation of best practice legal strategies for risk management and compliance.
• Legal advice and support to the bank's payments-related activities including merchant acquiring, card issuance, cross currency payments, payment systems and mobile payments.
• Representation of the bank in legal proceedings related to payment services, such as litigation, arbitration, and regulatory investigations.
• Creation and review of legal documents such as payment services agreements, cardholder agreements, and other payment-related agreements to ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations and, where relevant, negotiate with counterparties.

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.