Senior Risk Advisor, Debit Card & Digital Payments

Vanguard

Investment Management

Malvern, PA - USA

Senior Specialist / Project Manager

Hybrid

Experteer Overview

In this role you will shape risk strategy for debit card and digital payments, partnering with product, tech, legal, and third parties to enable compliant, scalable capability launches. You’ll translate complex risk into actionable guidance for executives and help drive risk-aware innovation across payment programs. You will support operational resilience and governance for transactional products, balancing customer experience with risk controls. This is a mission-driven opportunity to influence payments risk at scale within a leading financial services firm.

Responsibilities

Provide risk guidance and assurance to enterprise and divisional partners within the operational and strategic risk framework, focusing on payments-related risks.
Develop and implement divisional risk controls for card programs and digital payments.
Lead long-term risk management strategies for evolving payment capabilities and enabling technologies.
Build and maintain relationships with stakeholders to understand evolving risk needs in transactional products.
Translate complex risk topics into clear guidance for senior leaders to inform decisions.
Oversee the effectiveness of risk management, set goals, and elevate standards in payment operations.
Assess and prioritize payments-related risks, advising on controls and risk exposures.
Collaborate with product, technology, operations, legal, compliance and third-party vendors to design, launch, and oversee payment products in regulated environments.
Demonstrate familiarity with payments ecosystems (debit, money movement, real-time payments, digital models) across issuer, processor, network, and sponsor banks.
Apply knowledge of consumer protection, payments regulations, dispute handling, fraud management, and KYC to mitigate risk and improve processes.
Evaluate design and effectiveness of controls over payment products and flows; propose enhancements based on best practices.
Apply enterprise risk management concepts to communicate payment risks and support new product development.
Participate in special projects and perform other duties as assigned.

Key requirements

Minimum eight years of payments risk or digital payments experience with hands-on debit card program exposure.
Bachelor's degree; graduate degree preferred.
Strong understanding of debit card and payments ecosystems and third-party risk considerations.
Experience providing risk advisory support across payments operations (fraud prevention, transaction monitoring, dispute handling, consumer protection).
Proven ability to partner with product, technology, operations, legal, and compliance to drive risk decisions in regulated environments.
Ability to communicate complex payments and risk topics to senior stakeholders and influence execution.
Graduate degree preferred.
Relevant payments or risk certifications (e.g., NACHA) a plus.

stakeholder collaboration clear communication influence without authority payments ecosystems knowledge (issuer, processor, network, sponsor bank)fraud prevention transaction monitoring

Description

In this role you will shape risk strategy for debit card and digital payments, partnering with product, tech, legal, and third parties to en…

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