Head of Payment & Banking Operations

About Equals

Equals is the next-generation global money movement platform built for exceptional businesses operating across borders. We bring international payments, embedded finance, and more together into a single connection that simplifies operations and strengthens financial control. With deep expertise and integrated infrastructure, Equals turns financial complexity into reliable solutions.

With our headquarters in London and teams around the UK and Europe, you will join a very close-knit, talented and supportive team from various backgrounds who believe that bringing different perspectives together helps us understand our customers' needs. United, by one thing, making money management straightforward and cost-effective for our customers.

About the role

Every pound that moves across the Equals platform passes through Payment & Banking Operations. As Head of Payment & Banking Operations, you'll own the operational engine behind it: collections and funding land, FX settles cleanly, the books reconcile every day and every payment finds its route and arrives. And when a payment goes wrong, we know first, say so first and fix it before it affects the customer.

You'll lead a multi-disciplinary team across settlement and scheme processing, reconciliation, payment investigations and exceptions, scheme and banking-partner operations, and processor operations. You'll be the senior operational owner of payment reliability and the first line of control for payments, and you'll lead the relationships with the schemes, banks and processors that give Equals its reach.

The role also carries a commercial mandate: bringing processing cost per transaction down as volumes grow. You'll get there through automation — reconciliation matched by machine with people focused on the breaks, payment status customers can see for themselves, and every failure fed back to the platform so the cause gets fixed, not just the symptom. One principle never changes: no one releases funds alone.

Duties and responsibilities

Settlement and scheme processing. Own daily processing across all rails — Faster Payments, CHAPS, Bacs, SEPA, SWIFT and card schemes — including cut-off management by corridor and scheme, funding execution, and maker-checker release on every payment.

Reconciliation. Own payment reconciliation end to end: books right every business day, matching automated, breaks resolved to root cause, ageing visible by queue, and evidence ready for internal and external audit.

Investigations and exceptions. Run the payment investigations desk — tracing, recalls, amendments, beneficiary claims and enquiries with partner banks — as a managed case queue with clear SLAs, ageing MI and live status shared with customer-facing teams.

Scheme compliance and partner operations. Deliver scheme mandates on time, own scheme attestations and operational compliance, review scheme release bulletins with Technology, and lead day-to-day operational liaison with banking partners, nostro providers and schemes.

Recovery execution. Carry out recalls, freezes and reimbursements quickly and accurately when fraud or disputes cases require them, within agreed timeframes and with confirmation every time.

Payment status. Give customers and customer-facing teams clear, live visibility of every payment, so fewer people ever need to ask where their money is.

Unit cost. Own processing cost per transaction by rail: measure it, report it and drive it down as volumes grow.

Automation and AI. Lead the team's automation roadmap across reconciliation, exception triage, payment tracking and investigations, within clear guardrails: automation proposes, people approve every money-moving decision.

Incidents and resilience. Run the payments on-call and incident rota, lead root-cause analysis and make sure key clients and partners hear about issues from us first. Keep access governance tight, with cross-trained cover on every critical banking and scheme platform.

First-line controls. Own the payments control environment — maker-checker in every workflow, break write-offs within mandate and clear control MI — and be a credible counterpart to second line, internal audit and external auditors.

Platform feedback. Turn straight-through processing (STP) failures, repair reasons and break causes into clear requirements for Technology and Product, so the platform removes the cause, not just the queue.

Operating rhythm. Run a weekly review of the team's numbers — payment success by corridor, STP, instant and same-day share, break ageing, investigation cycle time, mandate delivery, unit cost and incidents — with every action owned through to closure.

People. Build and lead a high-performing team of managers and specialists: clear standards, cross-training across settlement, reconciliation, investigations, scheme and card operations, regular coaching, and decisive action when the standard isn't met.

What success looks like

• Payments just work: high success rates and a growing instant and same-day share across every corridor and scheme, with strong straight-through processing.
• The books are right every day, breaks are cleared to root cause and audits are clean.
• Customers rarely need to ask where their money is, and investigations close quickly.
• Scheme mandates land on time, attestations are clean, and schemes and banking partners see Equals as one of their cleanest operational counterparties.
• Processing cost per transaction falls as volumes grow.
• Incidents stay within tolerance, and we usually spot them before customers do.
• Routine work is automated, and a person still approves every money-moving decision.
• The team is strong and resilient, with real depth of cover.

Who you are

• You take a reconciliation break, a failed payment or a missed cut-off personally. You don't stop at the first obstacle: you own the fix end to end and chase the root cause, not the symptom.
• You build around the moments that matter most to customers — their first payment and any payment that fails — and catch problems before they're felt.
• You run a precise operation: books right every day, exceptions cleared within SLA and controls that hold.
• You raise the bar: you hire and grow high-standard operators, coach hard and act decisively when the standard isn't met.
• You're a genuine player-coach, as comfortable in the detail of a stuck payment as in a negotiation with a banking partner.

Experience and qualifications

A proven track record leading payment operations, settlement or banking operations in a regulated payments, e-money or fintech business — typically 7+ years in payments, including 3+ years managing managers — with the numbers to show for it: success rates, STP, break rates and cycle times.

Hands-on depth in UK and international payment rails — Faster Payments, CHAPS, Bacs, SEPA and SWIFT (including gpi tracking and investigations) — and card scheme settlement, along with the cut-offs, mandates and attestations that come with them.

Experience owning a reconciliation control to a daily standard and evidencing it to auditors — designing the control, not just following it.

A record of scaling an operations team through automation — reconciliation platforms, exception tooling, payment status publication — while keeping every money-moving decision with a person.

Credibility with banks, schemes and processors: able to run the operational relationship and negotiate operational terms independently.

Experience leading a multi-team operation with an on-call rota, cross-training it for resilience and removing single points of failure.

Nice to have

A degree in finance, economics, business or a related discipline.

Experience of treasury or liquidity operations in a payments business.

First-line risk and control experience: RCSA, incident root-cause analysis and audit remediation.

Data skills (SQL or similar) and comfort building the MI the team runs on.

Practical use of AI tools in an operations setting, with a clear view of their limits and the guardrails they need.

Experience with SWIFT gpi Tracker and SWIFT Case Management.

Experience leading operations through periods of change while keeping daily deadlines on track.

Benefits

• Competitive salary benchmarked against a peer group.
• 28 days holiday per year
• Private health care

Company pension scheme

Hybrid working, with regular time in the office for collaboration.

Opportunities for progression, development and learning new skills.

Free onsite Nuffield Health gym and pool in London, with discounted gym membership elsewhere.

Interbank currency rates on travel money and international transfers.

The opportunity to have a visible impact on a growing product-led fintech business.

Diversity & inclusion

Equals is committed to building a workplace where everyone can be themselves. We actively welcome different perspectives, backgrounds and experiences, and we'll work with you to understand what you need to do your best work. We're an equal opportunities employer and proud of it.

We offer hybrid working across our teams, balancing time in the office — for collaboration, events and the relationships that make work rewarding — with the flexibility to work remotely where roles allow.