EVP – Operations Transformation — Payments Portfolio

The mandate

A payments provider is moving merchant onboarding, servicing and dispute handling away from email, branch and relationship-manager intervention. Early digital releases have increased straight-through activity, but exception queues have grown and ownership fragments when a case crosses onboarding, settlement, fraud or chargeback teams. The economics will not improve if work merely moves from visible service desks into hidden operational rework. A new EVP for Operations Transformation will own the journey end to end.

The position leads around 600 employees and material partners across onboarding operations, merchant servicing, settlements, disputes, chargebacks, reconciliations and operational change. Its asset, transaction and investment perimeter is approximately ₹5,650 crore. Operations run to daily cut-offs and network rules; change must therefore be introduced without compromising settlement accuracy, safeguarded balances or the evidence required for customer and regulatory challenge.

The portfolio has useful automation, experienced operators and substantial demand. Its constraint is fragmented design. Digital teams measure completion, operations measure queues, commercial teams escalate selected merchants, and risk teams see defects after they aggregate. This executive must create a shared definition of successful service, decide which exceptions deserve expert judgement, and remove the rules or data breaks that create the rest.

Merchant diversity makes sequencing consequential. A small retailer with one terminal, a platform processing marketplace settlements and an enterprise treasury team do not carry the same tolerance for self-service or interruption. The operating design must recognise those differences without rebuilding bespoke channels for each segment.

Why this seat is open

The board created the role urgently after channel migration crossed a volume threshold at which dispersed sponsorship became unsafe and uneconomic. Functional heads retain their daily control responsibilities, but no executive presently owns the combined customer outcome, cost and migration risk. The appointment is new and is expected to move quickly; transformation partners will remain only until permanent leadership has set the target model.

What you will own

• Map merchant journeys from application to live processing and from dispute to resolution, quantifying hand-offs, failure demand, control evidence and cost.
• Set migration waves according to merchant complexity and operational readiness rather than a uniform digital adoption target.
• Redesign exception handling, distinguishing cases suited to rule correction, data repair, automation or skilled human judgement.
• Protect settlement, reconciliation and chargeback controls through dual running, entry and exit criteria, and named rollback authority.
• Consolidate operational performance around first-time-right, elapsed resolution, repeat contact, aged value and customer outcome.
• Reshape the 600-person workforce through capacity planning, redeployment and capability building; use responsible consultation where roles materially change.
• Hold technology and external partners to outcome-based acceptance criteria, including real production scenarios and non-functional resilience.
• Create a direct feedback mechanism through which operations defects alter product rules, merchant communication and channel design.

The first 12 months

During the first 45 days, observe work at peak settlement and dispute periods, sample failed digital journeys and reconcile queue reports to actual aged merchant value. Freeze any migration wave whose control evidence or recovery plan is inadequate. Establish a daily forum only for high-risk exceptions, with routine issues resolved through permanent owners rather than executive escalation.

By day 90, approve the target journey and workforce model. Baseline cost per successful onboarding, service request and dispute—not cost per task. Select two merchant cohorts for controlled migration and document the failure modes that would trigger pause or rollback.

Between months four and nine, remove duplicate checks, repair priority data interfaces, introduce intelligent routing and retrain staff for judgement-heavy work. Relationship-manager escalation should become exceptional and auditable. Vendor releases should be accepted only when production evidence confirms settlement and service performance.

At twelve months, digital completion should exceed 80% for eligible journeys; avoidable repeat contact should fall by 35%; operational cost per successful outcome should fall by 18%; and 95% of settlement or chargeback exceptions should resolve within their risk-based ageing threshold. No migration-related material loss, missed safeguarding obligation or unresolved severe control breach is acceptable.

What the board will measure

• Successful digital completion and first-time-right performance, segmented by merchant complexity.
• Settlement accuracy, aged unreconciled value and recovery from operational interruption.
• Failure demand and repeat contact eliminated rather than displaced between queues.
• Unit cost, capacity released and redeployment outcomes for affected colleagues.
• Dispute and chargeback timeliness together with fairness of merchant outcomes.
• Delivery partner performance against live operational evidence.

The person

You have 18–22 years in payments, banking operations, cards, transaction services or another always-on financial infrastructure. You have led at least 600 employees and partners through a customer-channel or operations transformation and held responsibility for an operating, asset or investment perimeter of no less than ₹3,300 crore.

Your experience joins process redesign to hard operational control. You can discuss settlement breaks, chargeback evidence and queue ageing with specialists, then explain the commercial consequences to the executive committee. You have handled workforce impact honestly and can show that automation removed demand or improved outcomes rather than simply reducing visible headcount.

The organisation values leaders who go to the work, test dashboards against real cases and intervene selectively. Heroic escalation management is not a substitute for changing the system that generates escalations.

Compensation and terms

The indicative fixed range is ₹2.2–3.0 crore with a performance variable linked to service, control, cost and responsible workforce outcomes. This is a permanent onsite role in Bengaluru. Appointment will proceed urgently, with practical recognition of the selected executive’s current obligations.

Confidentiality

Identity, payment rails and operating volumes are reserved for candidates who pass initial fit and conflicts screening and agree confidentiality. Published details are rounded and blended. They neither identify a firm nor authorise contact with any organisation that a reader believes may resemble it.