The posting
As we continue to scale our payment and merchant ecosystem, we are looking for a Risk Operations Manager – Merchant Risk to strengthen our merchant risk management framework and ensure that merchants onboarded and transacting through our platforms remain within acceptable risk parameters.
This is a hands-on role combining merchant underwriting, transaction risk management, fraud detection, portfolio monitoring and risk operations.
Key Responsibilities
1. Merchant Risk Assessment & Underwriting
- Lead risk assessment and underwriting of new merchants across different business models, industries, jurisdictions and payment products.
- Review merchant KYB/KYC information, corporate structures, beneficial ownership, business activities, website/app presence, transaction flows and source of funds where applicable.
- Assess merchant risk across factors including: Business model and industry risk Geographic and jurisdictional exposure Transaction characteristics and expected volumes Product/service risk Fraud and chargeback exposure Financial and operational risk Regulatory and reputational risk AML/CFT and sanctions-related risk indicators
- Establish appropriate merchant risk ratings, transaction limits, reserves, velocity controls and other risk mitigation measures.
- Escalate high-risk or unusual merchants to Risk/Compliance for enhanced due diligence or approval.
2. Ongoing Merchant Monitoring
- Monitor the merchant portfolio to identify changes in business activity, transaction patterns and emerging risk indicators.
- Conduct periodic and event-driven merchant reviews based on risk level and predefined triggers.
- Identify unusual changes in: Transaction volume Average transaction size Refund rates Chargeback rates Geographic distribution Payment methods Customer behaviour Product/service mix
- Investigate merchants whose actual transaction behaviour materially deviates from their approved business profile.
- Recommend appropriate actions including enhanced monitoring, transaction restrictions, temporary suspension or termination.
3. Fraud & Transaction Risk Management
- Develop and operate merchant-level transaction risk controls to detect potential fraud, abuse and suspicious activity.
- Work with Risk Product / Engineering teams to develop and optimise transaction monitoring rules, risk thresholds and automated alerts.
- Analyse transaction patterns and merchant behaviour to identify emerging fraud typologies.
- Investigate suspicious transaction activity and determine appropriate operational actions.
- Monitor fraud losses, chargebacks, refunds and other merchant-related risk metrics.
- Identify opportunities to improve detection accuracy while minimising false positives and unnecessary friction for legitimate merchants.
4. Chargeback & Payment Risk
- Monitor merchant chargeback, dispute, refund and fraud performance.
- Identify merchants with deteriorating payment performance and proactively implement remediation measures.
- Establish risk thresholds and escalation triggers for high-chargeback or high-refund merchants.
- Work with Payments Operations, Finance and Commercial teams on merchant remediation and loss recovery.
- Analyse root causes of payment disputes and recommend preventive measures.
5. Risk Operations & Case Management
- Own day-to-day merchant risk investigations and ensure cases are reviewed and resolved within defined SLAs.
- Establish clear investigation procedures, escalation matrices and decision-making frameworks.
- Maintain complete and auditable documentation of merchant risk decisions.
- Ensure consistent application of risk policies across merchant onboarding, monitoring and remediation.
- Conduct quality assurance reviews to identify gaps in risk decisions and operational processes.
- Support incident management and urgent merchant risk escalations.
6. Risk Policy, Controls & Process Improvement
- Develop and continuously improve merchant risk policies, procedures and operational playbooks.
- Define merchant risk segmentation and risk appetite criteria together with Risk and Compliance leadership.
- Review existing controls and identify opportunities for automation and process optimisation.
- Partner with Product, Engineering and Data teams to enhance merchant risk tooling and dashboards.
- Support the development of automated merchant risk scoring and decisioning frameworks.
- Conduct periodic reviews of risk rules to ensure they remain effective against evolving fraud and payment risk patterns.
7. Risk Analytics & Reporting
- Develop and maintain merchant risk dashboards and management reporting.
- Monitor key risk indicators including: Merchant approval / rejection rates High-risk merchant volumes Fraud rates Chargeback rates Refund rates Transaction decline rates Risk alert volumes Loss rates Merchant concentration risk Risk review turnaround time
- Provide regular portfolio risk reporting and insights to senior management.
- Identify emerging trends and recommend appropriate risk appetite or control adjustments.
8. Cross-Functional Stakeholder Management
- Work closely with Compliance / AML, Payments Operations, Product, Engineering, Finance, Sales and Customer Support to manage merchant risk.
- Partner with Commercial teams to balance business growth with appropriate risk controls.
- Provide risk guidance during the launch of new merchant products, payment methods, markets and business models.
- Act as a key risk escalation point for complex merchant cases.
- Support internal audits, compliance reviews and regulatory examinations relating to merchant risk management.
Requirements
Experience
- Bachelor's degree in Risk Management, Finance, Business, Economics, Accounting, Data Analytics or a related discipline.
- 5–8 years of relevant experience in merchant risk, payment risk, fraud risk, transaction monitoring, acquiring, payment operations, fintech or financial services.
- Experience managing merchant onboarding and ongoing merchant risk monitoring is highly preferred.
- Experience in a payment institution, PSP, acquirer, fintech, bank, card network or digital asset company is advantageous.
- Strong understanding of merchant fraud, payment risk and chargeback management.
- Experience managing risk operations teams or leading risk operations projects is preferred.
Technical & Analytical Skills
- Strong ability to analyse large volumes of transactional and merchant data.
- Comfortable working with risk dashboards, transaction monitoring systems and case management tools.
- Strong Excel/Google Sheets skills; SQL, BI or data analytics experience is a strong advantage.
- Ability to translate data and risk signals into clear operational decisions.
- Experience designing risk rules, thresholds, scoring models or monitoring frameworks is preferred.
Risk Knowledge
Strong understanding of several of the following:
- Merchant underwriting
- KYB/KYC and merchant due diligence
- Fraud detection and prevention
- Transaction monitoring
- Chargeback and dispute management
- Payment fraud
- Merchant monitoring
- AML/CFT risk
- Sanctions and adverse media risk
- Risk-based merchant segmentation
- Payment processing and acquiring
- Digital payment / fintech risk
Knowledge of Singapore's payment services regulatory environment and MAS AML/CFT requirements is an advantage. MAS expectations include ongoing monitoring of business relationships and scrutiny of transactions against a customer's known business and risk profile.
Competencies
- Strong risk judgement – able to make sound decisions under uncertainty and balance commercial considerations with risk appetite.
- Analytical thinking – able to identify patterns and connect seemingly unrelated risk indicators.
- Attention to detail – strong discipline in reviewing merchant information and documenting decisions.
- Problem solving – able to investigate complex merchant and transaction issues independently.
- Ownership – takes accountability for risk decisions and operational outcomes.
- Communication – able to explain risk decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Stakeholder management – comfortable challenging business stakeholders when risk concerns arise.
- Execution-oriented – able to operate effectively in a fast-paced, high-growth environment.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
- Merchant risk review SLA achievement
- Accuracy and consistency of merchant risk decisions
- Fraud loss rate / merchant fraud exposure
- Chargeback and dispute rate
- High-risk merchant identification effectiveness
- False-positive rate of risk controls
- Risk incident response and resolution time
- Quality and completeness of merchant risk documentation
- Effectiveness of merchant monitoring controls
- Reduction in preventable merchant-related losses
- Timely implementation of risk control enhancements
- Successful automation and process improvement initiatives
What We Offer
- Opportunity to build and scale merchant risk operations within a high-growth fintech environment.
- Exposure to payments, cross-border transactions, digital assets and emerging financial products.
- High level of ownership and direct exposure to senior Risk, Compliance, Product and Business stakeholders.
- Opportunity to build and improve merchant risk frameworks, processes and technology from the ground up.
- Fast-paced, international and highly collaborative working environment.
