Senior Manager, Benefit Centre of Excellence, Visa Europe

The Benefits Centre of Excellence (CoE) centralises the sourcing, negotiation, onboarding and lifecycle management of premium benefits, giving issuers a turnkey catalogue that elevates Visa’s consumer propositions and directly advances our Consumer Solutions Strategy and Affluent Big Rock in Europe.
Its scope spans Europe-wide supplier identification, commercial and operating model assessment, benefits sourcing, and platform integration and ongoing performance optimisation across Travel, Peace of Mind, Lifestyle & Entertainment and UHNW benefit areas.
By centrally sourcing and managing differentiated, high-value benefits at scale, the CoE supports Visa Europe, all clusters and ultimately clients to drive higher cardholder engagement. The CoE speeds up time-to-market and captures cost efficiencies for Visa and our clients.
Most importantly, it supercharges the “Affluent Big Rock” in the Visa 2030 roadmap—driving affluent acquisition, activation and incremental spend, and thereby fuelling sustainable revenue growth.

This high profile role is part of the Benefits Business Development team, with a focus on the end-to-end sourcing and commercial negotiation of cardholder benefits in the Travel, Peace of Mind, Lifestyle & Entertainment, and UHNW segments for Visa Europe’s Centre of Excellence.

Responsibilities

The ideal candidate will execute against the following activities of the BD/ sales cycle:

Pre-sales

• Together with the Head of Benefits Center of Excellence build a sales and partner strategy and build and manage a pipeline of potential benefits partners
• Co-lead the asset development and design a standardized sales program setup, spanning verticals, segments, partner propositions, pricing, contracting, billing and tracking

Sales

• Identify, assess and select best-in-class benefit partners, building a robust European supplier network while securing favourable pricing, service-level agreements and contractual terms.
• Negotiate the terms, SLAs, contracting, renewals of sales activities, incl. build business case and obtain approval, and manage the end-to-end hand-off to operations for onboarding

Evergreen

• Lead integrated sales and sourcing model and cycles with Value-Added Services and loyalty, drive joint sales cycle management
• Align with Regions, Global, Sourcing and Finance on margin management margin and business cases

Operations – cross-team collaboration

• Provide inputs for Benefits Operations to support the onboarding process for new benefit providers, incl. coordinating with legal, compliance, product, technology and marketing teams to ensure seamless integration into Visa platforms.
• Build in learnings from benefits performance into the sales approach and negotiations, e.g. benefits performance & utilisation, customer satisfaction, cost efficiency, partner service levels; drive continuous improvements of sales engine

• Progressive experience as a Product Manager, Proposition Manager or similar role within the payments, loyalty or card-benefits ecosystem, preferably in a pan-European context.
• Deep, hands-on understanding of the European payments and benefits landscape, incl. the range of cardholder benefit verticals (Travel, Peace of Mind, Lifestyle & Entertainment, UHNW).
• Demonstrated track record of screening, short-listing and contracting benefit suppliers – including collaborating with Operations team on due-diligence, financial and technical viability, service levels and regulatory compliance.
• Strong commercial acumen with experience structuring and negotiating multi-market agreements; adept at optimising commercial terms, revenue-share models, SLAs and KPIs.
• Ability to operate independently and as self-starter, with the attitude to push through if things stall and to structure, prioritise and execute at pace if things scale
• Proven ability to map benefit propositions to strategic priorities - specifically Visa’s 2030 strategy, the “Affluent Big Rock,” and issuer/client pain points - and to build compelling business cases that secure executive buy-in to source benefit
• Understanding of the end-to-end sourcing cycle, including required hand-offs for integration and onboarding of benefit partners onto Benefits platforms, and understanding of cross-functional needs, e.g. legal, compliance, technology and marketing functions.
• Excellent stakeholder-management and communication skills; able to influence senior internal and external audiences across diverse cultures and to lead cross-functional project teams in a fast-moving, matrixed environment.

Visa will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.