About the Role

Versapay is scaling its B2B payments platform and preparing for future embedded lending capabilities. We're hiring a Director to lead the day-to-day merchant boarding, underwriting, and risk operations functions, with an initial focus on improving speed, quality, consistency, and control across payments onboarding. This is a hands-on operator role: you'll modernize how we
onboard and underwrite merchants - applying automation, analytics, and practical AI-enabled workflows to create a frictionless experience for low-risk customers while maintaining rigorous controls for higher-risk segments.

You will own daily execution of boarding, underwriting, exception management, and ongoing merchant risk monitoring, while partnering with Product, Engineering, Compliance, Finance, Sales, and sponsor bank stakeholders to evolve policies, workflows, vendor integrations, and reporting. As Versapay's lending ambitions mature, you will help translate payments and AR data into practical underwriting inputs and operating controls.

A key opportunity in this role is Versapay's unique data position. Our AR automation platform provides visibility into invoice-level activity, DSO trends, payer behavior, and customer concentration. You will help operationalize that data into better boarding, underwriting, and monitoring practices - first for payments risk and, over time, for embedded lending use cases.

What you'll do

Boarding & Underwriting Operations
• Lead a team of underwriters, risk analysts, and boarding specialists supporting both payments (PayFac/ISO) and lending applications.
• Redesign the boarding journey to be AI-first - straight-through approval for clean files, intelligent triage for exceptions, human review only where it adds judgment.
• Help define and operationalize risk appetite, credit policy, exposure limits, and approval guardrails across merchant segments, escalating exceptions through the appropriate leadership and governance forums.
• Support the operating rhythm for risk governance, including exception review, delegated authority workflows, escalation thresholds, and monthly reporting for senior leadership and sponsor bank partners.

Modern Decisioning Stack
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Compliance, and vendors to improve the technology stack for KYB/KYC, business verification, beneficial ownership, sanctions/PEP screening, fraud, bank/transaction data, and decision orchestration.
• Implement practical automation and AI-assisted document review for common underwriting materials, ensuring outputs are reviewable, auditable, and integrated into human decision workflows.
• Maintain clear controls around automated decisions, including decision logic documentation, override tracking, quality assurance, and periodic performance review.

Lending Underwriting
• Contribute to the buildout of the underwriting operating model for future embedded lending products, including application intake, policy translation, documentation requirements, line assignment inputs, and exception handling.
• Partner with Finance on portfolio performance, loss forecasting, vintage analysis, and reserve modeling.
• Partner with Finance and leadership to ensure underwriting practices, pricing inputs, and monitoring routines are aligned with the economics and risk profile of any future lending program.
• Establish servicing-side risk controls: early-warning triggers, collections strategy, and loss mitigation.

Portfolio Risk & Monitoring
• Own ongoing merchant monitoring, including transaction surveillance, chargeback and return analytics, behavioral anomaly detection, fraud indicators, ACH-return trends, and early signs of credit deterioration.
• Build dashboards and exposure reporting for executive and sponsor bank review.
• Lead reaction protocols for high-severity events (fraud rings, processor errors, funding disputes, NSFs, breaches of merchant agreement).

Compliance, Sponsor Bank & Network Relationships
• Ensure boarding and underwriting comply with NACHA, BSA/AML, OFAC, card brand rules, state lending laws, and sponsor bank requirements.
• Support consistent boarding, underwriting, and monitoring standards across U.S. and Canadian operations, partnering with Compliance on applicable jurisdictional requirements.
• Serve as a key operational contact with sponsor banks and processors on underwriting and risk matters, including audits, exception requests, file reviews, and policy alignment.
• Partner with Compliance and Legal on policy approvals, regulatory exam readiness, and audit response.

Leadership
• Build, coach, and scale a high-performing team across underwriting, boarding ops, risk analytics, and portfolio monitoring.
• Translate risk strategy into measurable SLAs and KPIs (time-to-decision, approval rate, fraud bps, loss rate, NPS for boarded merchants).

What We're Looking For

Required
• 8+ years of relevant experience in payments risk, merchant underwriting, boarding operations, credit risk, or financial services operations, with at least 3+ years leading teams or major operational workstreams.
• Deep knowledge of merchant underwriting: KYB/KYC, beneficial ownership, financial statement review, exposure modelling, MCC/industry risk, chargeback economics.
• Proven track record modernizing legacy boarding processes - implementing automated decisioning, vendor orchestration, and straight-through processing.
• Hands-on familiarity with modern risk and verification vendors (KYB/KYC, fraud, bank data aggregators, accounting connectors, decision orchestration platforms).
• Working knowledge of card brand rules, NACHA, BSA/AML, OFAC, and sponsor bank operating requirements.
• Experience operating in major card processor and sponsor bank environments.
• Strong analytical chops - fluent in SQL, comfortable with portfolio data, can interrogate model outputs and challenge analyst conclusions.
• Ability to use alternative data signals - such as AR/invoice data, payer behaviour,accounting-system data, or transaction flows - to improve underwriting, monitoring, or exception review processes.
• Pragmatic approach to automation and AI - able to identify use cases that improve speed and accuracy while maintaining auditable decisions and appropriate human oversight.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to explain underwriting decisions, operational tradeoffs, risk trends, and exceptions to senior stakeholders.

Preferred
• Prior lending exposure preferred, particularly in small business lending, working capital, MCA, factoring, term loans, or embedded finance; direct credit policy ownership is a plus but not required.
• Experience supporting the launch or operational scaling of a lending, credit, or embedded-finance product inside a payments, fintech, or B2B software company.
• Familiarity with AI/ML risk decisioning platforms (e.g., Sift, Sardine, Feedzai, Zest, Taktile, Oscilar, Unit21, Sentilink) and LLM-based document review tooling.
• Background in B2B / accounts receivable payments, embedded finance, or vertical SaaS.
• Exposure to model risk management frameworks (SR 11-7 or equivalent).
• Experience navigating sponsor bank audits and regulatory exams.
• Working understanding of lending economics, including credit facilities, covenants, advance rates, cost of capital, and how those inputs influence underwriting policy and pricing.
• Experience operating across multiple jurisdictions, including U.S. and Canadian payments or lending requirements; EU exposure is a plus.

What Success Looks Like (First 12 Months)

• AI-augmented document review live in underwriting workflow with measured accuracy and override tracking.
• Boarding and underwriting workflows redesigned with measurable reductions in decision
  time, clearer exception routing, improved SLA visibility, and increased straight-through processing for clean files.
• Risk governance cadence operating effectively with documented policies, decision authority, exception tracking, and monthly reporting for senior leadership and sponsor bank partners.
• Versapay's proprietary AR/invoice data incorporated into underwriting and monitoring workflows, with early evidence of improved decision quality, faster reviews, or better risk segmentation.
• Unified risk dashboard covering payments and lending exposure available to executives and sponsor bank partners.
• Fraud, loss, chargeback/return, and exception trends remain within agreed risk appetite, with clear escalation paths and sponsor bank relationships in good standing.

$150,000 - $170,000 a year

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