💳 We're Hiring: Card Services Manager
📍 Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)
🕒 Employment Type: Full-Time
💼 Experience Level: Mid-Level to Senior
🌐 Work Arrangement: Fully Remote
About Us
We are a financial-services-focused organization committed to delivering secure, reliable, customer-centric payment and card solutions through operational excellence, technology, risk management, regulatory compliance, and continuous innovation.
Our distributed teams collaborate across Card Operations, Product, Payments, Technology, Risk, Fraud, Compliance, Finance, Customer Service, Cybersecurity, Legal, Banking Partners, Payment Networks, Processors, and Executive Leadership to deliver seamless card services and protect customers and organizational assets.
The Role
We are seeking an experienced Card Services Manager to lead card operations, issuance, servicing, transaction processing, customer support, card lifecycle management, fraud controls, operational risk, and service performance.
The ideal candidate will combine strong card-services expertise with operational leadership, payments knowledge, regulatory awareness, risk management, process improvement, and customer-experience capabilities.
The role will be responsible for managing the end-to-end card lifecycle, from application and issuance through activation, transaction support, disputes, replacement, renewal, suspension, closure, and reconciliation.
Key Responsibilities
- Develop and implement card-services strategies, operating models, policies, procedures, and service standards aligned with organizational objectives.
- Manage end-to-end card lifecycle operations covering application, approval, personalization, issuance, activation, usage, servicing, replacement, renewal, suspension, closure, and disposal.
- Oversee debit, credit, prepaid, corporate, virtual, and other card products where applicable.
- Manage card issuance and fulfillment processes, ensuring cards and PIN-related services are delivered securely and within established service levels.
- Coordinate with card processors, payment networks, banks, personalization bureaus, couriers, technology providers, and other external partners.
- Monitor card-production and fulfillment performance, including turnaround times, delivery accuracy, failed deliveries, returned cards, and service exceptions.
- Manage card activation, PIN management, card blocking, unblocking, replacement, renewal, expiry, and account-status processes.
- Ensure appropriate controls are in place for lost, stolen, compromised, damaged, expired, or otherwise restricted cards.
- Monitor card transaction processing and coordinate with Payments and Technology teams to resolve transaction-processing issues.
- Manage card-related customer inquiries, service requests, complaints, escalations, and operational incidents.
- Establish customer-service standards for card-related support and ensure timely resolution of service issues.
- Work with Fraud and Risk teams to monitor suspicious card activity, fraud trends, transaction anomalies, and potential card compromise.
- Support the implementation of fraud-prevention controls, transaction-monitoring rules, authentication processes, card controls, and customer alerts.
- Coordinate with Compliance and Legal teams to ensure card operations comply with applicable UAE financial regulations, payment-network rules, consumer-protection requirements, AML requirements, data-protection obligations, and internal policies.
- Monitor changes in card and payments regulations and assess their impact on products, processes, systems, and customer servicing.
- Manage card disputes, chargebacks, transaction investigations, and related operational processes in coordination with relevant teams and payment networks.
- Establish procedures for dispute intake, investigation, documentation, representment, resolution, and customer communication.
- Monitor chargeback trends and identify opportunities to reduce financial losses and operational inefficiencies.
- Coordinate card-related reconciliation activities with Finance, including settlement, transaction clearing, fees, adjustments, refunds, chargebacks, and financial exceptions.
- Monitor card-program financial performance and identify opportunities to improve operational efficiency and cost management.
- Manage card-related fees, pricing, service charges, interchange-related processes, and other commercial considerations where applicable.
- Work closely with Product teams on new card products, features, digital-card capabilities, rewards, loyalty programs, and customer-service enhancements.
- Support card-product launches, migrations, system upgrades, processor changes, and major operational transformation projects.
- Manage relationships with payment networks, processors, issuing partners, banks, fintech providers, technology vendors, and other strategic partners.
- Negotiate and monitor service-level agreements, operational requirements, performance standards, commercial terms, and escalation procedures.
- Establish business-continuity and disaster-recovery procedures for critical card services.
- Coordinate incident response for card-processing outages, system failures, cybersecurity incidents, processor disruptions, and other operational events.
- Maintain comprehensive card-service records, operational logs, incident registers, dispute records, reconciliation reports, vendor-performance records, and compliance documentation.
- Develop and monitor card-service KPIs, operational dashboards, risk indicators, and performance reports.
- Analyze card transaction volumes, approval rates, decline rates, fraud levels, dispute volumes, service requests, operational costs, and customer behavior.
- Identify opportunities to automate card-service processes and improve straight-through processing, digital servicing, and customer self-service.
- Evaluate emerging payment technologies such as virtual cards, tokenization, contactless payments, mobile wallets, digital issuance, and enhanced authentication solutions.
- Lead continuous-improvement initiatives to reduce processing times, operational errors, customer complaints, fraud exposure, and service costs.
- Prepare management reports, operational reviews, risk assessments, vendor-performance reports, and strategic recommendations for senior leadership.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Performance will be measured through a combination of operational, financial, customer, risk, and service KPIs, including:
- Card issuance turnaround time
- Card activation rate
- Card delivery success rate
- Card-service availability
- Transaction approval rate
- Transaction decline rate
- Card transaction processing accuracy
- Customer-service response time
- Customer complaint resolution time
- Card replacement turnaround time
- Renewal performance
- Chargeback resolution rate
- Chargeback loss rate
- Fraud-loss rate
- Fraud detection effectiveness
- Operational error rate
- Reconciliation accuracy
- Service-level agreement compliance
- Vendor performance
- Customer satisfaction
- Digital-card adoption
- Self-service adoption
- Card-program operating cost
- Business-continuity performance
Candidate Profile
The successful candidate should have strong experience in card operations, payments, banking operations, fintech, transaction processing, or a related financial-services discipline.
Experience managing debit, credit, prepaid, corporate, virtual, or other payment-card programs would be advantageous.
The candidate should have strong knowledge of the card lifecycle, payment processing, card servicing, disputes, fraud controls, regulatory requirements, and operational risk.
Experience working with international payment networks, card processors, issuing banks, or fintech platforms is highly desirable.
What You'll Bring
- Proven experience in card services, card operations, payments, banking operations, or fintech.
- Strong understanding of the end-to-end card lifecycle.
- Experience managing card issuance, activation, replacement, renewal, suspension, and closure.
- Strong knowledge of card transaction processing and payment operations.
- Experience with chargebacks, disputes, refunds, and transaction investigations.
- Strong understanding of card fraud, transaction monitoring, and operational risk.
- Experience working with payment networks, processors, banks, or card-technology providers.
- Strong knowledge of financial-services compliance and regulatory requirements.
- Experience managing service-level agreements and external vendors.
- Strong operational, analytical, and problem-solving capabilities.
- Excellent communication, stakeholder-management, and negotiation skills.
- Experience with card-management systems, payment-processing platforms, CRM systems, and operational reporting tools.
- Strong Excel and data-analysis capabilities; SQL, Power BI, or similar tools are advantageous.
- Experience with digital wallets, tokenization, virtual cards, or contactless payments is advantageous.
- Highly customer-focused, commercially minded, detail-oriented, and risk-conscious.
- Ability to manage multiple operational priorities and high-volume service environments.
- Ability to work independently and effectively within a fully remote environment.
- Relevant degree in Finance, Banking, Business, Economics, Technology, or a related discipline.
- Professional qualifications in payments, banking, risk, compliance, or operations are advantageous.
- Experience working within the UAE or wider GCC financial-services market is highly desirable.