Director Customer Payments, FinTech Commercial

at  Bookingcom

BUSINESS UNIT FINTECH

Across our offices worldwide, we continue to innovate. To solve for some of the most sophisticated challenges in travel and technology, and to plan for the exciting developments that lie ahead. With strategic long-term investments into what we believe the future of travel can be, we are opening up new career opportunities that will have a strong impact on our mission. We are united in the belief that our very human desire to explore the planet’s beauty and discover more about other people and cultures will endure. The world is waiting for us. Together, we will be ready.
Fintech ensures that customers and merchants in our market place-enabled ecosystem experience a streamlined payment experience whether they are booking flights, accommodations, rides or experiences. In that context, Fintech Business Unit department has worked hard in the past years to create delightful payment experiences for travellers, hotels and other members of our community. Fintech is a rapidly growing area within Booking.com, experiencing 100%+ annual transaction growth. As of today, +50% of all reservations made at Booking.com are paid directly in our platform (vs. less than 5% 6 years ago).
Commercial is a core function of FinTech and the heart of our P&L.
With business operations in nearly every country and city on the planet, we’ve already built global e-commerce company. But we’re not done yet. Can we provide additional flexibility and optionality for customers, mitigate more risk for partners, and build smarter integrations with the global and local payments’ ecosystem to make it even easier for customers and partners to pay and get paid across borders and in the currency, frequency and method of their choice? All of this while accelerating Booking.com’s flywheel and running the growth and profitability of FinTech’s P&L? With strong leadership, financial smarts and the payments expertise you offer – yes, we can!
We are now entering the next phase of unlocking this full potential as one of the largest merchants globally on the web. At this scale, the aim is to unlock new geographies and payments products across all prioritised segments in the most operational effective, customer positive and financially sensible way. To turn this vision into reality, we are looking for an experienced & senior FinTech Leader to become our Director of Customer Payments, FinTech Commercial!

IDEAL EXPERIENCE:

• World leading commercial excellence with an entrepreneurial mindset and strong leadership skills. Act as a true business/ P&L owner
• A creative strategist with excellent negotiation and execution abilities at the C suite-level and deep understanding of the technical requirements of Fintech related Products and how these are leveraged effectively through operations across internal BU’s, in collaboration with the external (global) ecosystem
• Creative and active thinking. Having delivered complex projects with P&L impact, owning end-to-end effort
• The goal is to promote and expand the Fintech Partnerships commercial activity that will generate additional revenues, improve profitability and open up new markets & products for our Travelers and Partners, across all segments and brands
• Substantial knowledge in the field of Fintech and Financial third party ecosystem, be recognized as an authority on the topic.
• Broad & Advanced knowledge required in the related fields of Finance, Licencing, Operational Excellence, and Product
• The ability to sit with the C-suite of the largest players in the Financial Infrastructure world as an equal in negotiations and strategy settings.
• Deep product and legal/ contract understanding.
• Detail oriented; flexibility; willingness to get things done and deliver in a fast-changing very demanding environment
• Be able to represent the company in industry fora.

This critical position will report into Juan Carlos Rodriguez Inigo, Senior Director of FinTech Commercial, and is located in Amsterdam, NL, or London, UK. The role will lead an expanding team (expected 7 FTEs by EO 2024), including Senior Managers and Managers with decades of international experience in the sector, and will be part of the BU extended leadership team. With a global scope, and the responsibility of sourcing, building and managing all the third party relationships to enable a perfect and differentiated payments’ experience for our travellers, while maximising the P&L. This role should not be seen as a partnership management one. You are responsible for directly growing Fintech’s and Booking’s business -i.e. Conversion and P&L- by leveraging third party relationships.
This role drives the cross department and brands collaboration when a new FinTech Product or Region is unlocked in the market, involving and aligning the requirements and actions of our internal Tax, Credit Control, Legal, Partner & Customer Service teams.

You will:

• Create, set and drive the commercial/ business vision and strategy of our customer/ traveller side payments
• Translate the vision & strategy into an actionable roadmap with clear milestones
• Define the organisational structure and the required level of capabilities to deliver on the strategy & roadmap
• Translate those identified capabilities to the existing team and support them in their targeted growth (Build) and identify where additional capabilities are needed (Buy).
• Create a High Performing & Engaged team, which focuses on the key priorities and is leading the industry in terms of Fintech third party enablement
• Lead by example on all Booking.com values
• Manage the money flows to optimize for the commercial relationships with Fintech ecosystem
• Identify, execute and own P&L initiatives. Your role is not to close a high number of contracts or to conduct relationship management of third parties, but to maximise P&L impact through increasing conversion in the most sustainable and profitable way P&L & ROI-oriented
• Orchestrate the risk dependency of Booking amongst Fintech third parties
• Continuous ownership of aligning internal Product, Engineering, Finance, Customer Service, Legal and Business Segments Leaders wishes and requirements with the deliverable and possibilities of the Fintech ecosystem you manage . As a result a thorough understanding of Finance (commercial & regulatory), and Operational structure is required.
• Continuous engagement with the pay-in/ customer-side third party ecosystem to drive operational alignment. Quarterly business reviews, annual planning and strategy cycles, etc.
• Continuous focus on positive commercial opportunities for Booking and its sister brands; business development-minded
• Set the objectives and expectations of the Customer Pillar of the Commercial Partnerships team, including its KPIs.. Set the example of the way of working in the craft of this role and drive the upskilling of the employees in the team.

You will work hand-in-hand with our existing Payments Product team as well as with many other departments (Finance, Legal, Tax, Tech, Fraud, etc) to bring to market new capabilities. You will be responsible for identifying, prioritising, negotiating and executing major FinTech opportunities third parties can deliver to Booking.com.