Manager, Customer Onboarding and Partnership, Franchise

Our Purpose Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential. Title and Summary Manager, Customer Onboarding and Partnership, Franchise Manager, Specialty Merchant Registration & Regulatory Programs (Europe) Overview The Manager, Specialty Merchant Registration & Regulatory Programs serves as Mastercard's regional subject matter expert for Specialty Merchant Registration and High-Risk Merchant Acquiring across Europe. This role enables the safe and compliant participation of high-risk acquirers, specialty merchants, payment facilitators, and emerging business models within the Mastercard ecosystem through effective management of registration, onboarding, licensing, compliance, and risk oversight activities. The position requires strong leadership, organizational, and influencing skills to lead regional regulatory and registration initiatives from planning through execution. The role is responsible for ensuring timely delivery, stakeholder alignment, issue resolution, and executive visibility while coordinating complex regulatory and operational activities across multiple functions and geographies. ________________________________________ Key Responsibilities Specialty Merchant Registration & High-Risk Acquiring • Manage Acquirers, specialty merchants, and payment facilitator lifecycle activities, including registration, licensing supplements, and program participation. • Identify acquirers, merchants, payment facilitators, and other ecosystem participants requiring registration or additional enablement, and coordinate completion of required processes including following the escalation process and taking necessary actions including conditional approval or declining the application • Coordinate with internal stakeholders to support end to end execution. • Designing internal and external reports that help identify poor performance areas and hence need urgent attention. • Engaging with customers when there are performance issues (including rule violations). • Support customers through training, education, and governance reviews to strengthen compliance, registration quality, and program performance. • Working with colleagues in Franchise to improve such engagements and better manage Specialty Merchants (e.g. expanding their categories, identifying missing registrations, optimizing costs). • Identify opportunities to improve operational efficiency and support regional objectives, governance, customer experience, and program effectiveness through process enhancement and automation. Regulatory Oversight & Compliance Coordination • Serve as the central coordination point between Regulatory, Compliance, Legal and Franchise teams to ensure regulatory requirements are effectively communicated, tracked, and implemented across Europe. • Establish and maintain a centralized repository of regulatory obligations for the Franchise Europe team • Coordinate responses to regulatory information requests originating from regulators, supervisory authorities, compliance teams, and internal review functions. • Drive the collection, validation, and consolidation of information required to support regulatory reviews, examinations, audits, licensing activities, and compliance assessments. Leadership Support & Executive Engagement • Act as a trusted advisor and strategic partner to European Franchise leadership team, supporting business planning, operational governance, and regulatory initiatives. • Prepare executive briefings, leadership updates, business reviews, risk summaries,