Head of Payment Services

Established in 2021, Independence Pet Holdings is a corporate holding company that manages a diverse and broad portfolio of modern pet health brands and services, including insurance, pet education, lost recovery services, and more throughout North America.

We believe pet insurance is more than a financial product and build solutions to simplify the pet parenting journey and help improve the well-being of pets. As a leading authority in the pet category, we operate with a full stack of resources, capital, and services to support pet parents. Our multi-brand and omni-channel approach include our own insurance carrier, insurance brands and partner brands. 

Doubtless Pet Insurance is hiring for a Head of Payment Services based in our New York City office

This is a hybrid role with 2-3 days/week in office

Position Overview

The Head of Payment Services leads the global strategy, controls, and day-to-day operations of the merchant acquiring and payment acceptance program, with a primary focus on risk management, portfolio health, operational excellence, and merchant experience. This role owns the end-to-end merchant services lifecycle, including onboarding, operational delivery, ongoing monitoring, disputes and chargebacks, and partner/vendor oversight.

Working closely with Risk, Compliance, Finance, Product, Sales, Relationship Management, and Engineering teams across the global organization, this leader will ensure a compliant, scalable, and high-performing payments program that reduces fraud and losses, maintains card brand and regulatory compliance, improves operational efficiency, and supports retention and profitability.

Key Responsibilities

• Merchant Services Strategy & Leadership — Own the end-to-end merchant services program, including merchant acquisition enablement, onboarding, implementation, administration, and ongoing support. Develop and execute the merchant services strategy and operating plan aligned with company revenue, retention, customer experience, and risk objectives.
• Payment Partner & Vendor Management — Manage strategic relationships with acquiring banks, processors, gateways, and key technology vendors. Negotiate contracts, pricing, service-level agreements, and risk and compliance requirements, including reporting, controls, data handling, and escalation protocols.
• Merchant Onboarding & KYC/KYB — Oversee merchant onboarding and KYC/KYB processes in partnership with Risk and Compliance, ensuring policy adherence, appropriate exception handling, and documentation standards aligned with card brand requirements and internal controls.
• Portfolio Risk Governance — Establish and operate a comprehensive portfolio risk governance program, including risk appetite, monitoring rules, merchant reviews, and control implementation. Proactively identify emerging risks, enforce appropriate controls, and maintain a healthy merchant portfolio.
• Fraud, Disputes & Chargeback Management — Own the fraud and chargeback operations strategy in partnership with Fraud and Risk teams, including monitoring, alerts, reserves and holds where applicable, dispute workflows, representment strategy, and continuous improvement initiatives designed to reduce losses and operational burden.
• Operational Risk & Controls — Maintain a strong control environment through documented policies and procedures, appropriate segregation of duties, periodic control testing and quality assurance, vendor oversight, business continuity readiness, and support for internal and external audits, card brand reviews, and partner examinations.
• Payment Operations — Drive operational excellence across settlement and funding, reconciliation, chargebacks and representment, disputes, and merchant account maintenance. Establish clear service levels, controls, quality standards, and accountability across payment operations.
• Incident & Escalation Management — Lead the response to payment and merchant risk events, including fraud spikes, compliance breaches, and funding or settlement issues. Oversee containment, stakeholder communications, root-cause analysis, corrective action plans, and resolution of high-impact merchant issues.
• Portfolio Performance & Profitability — Monitor and improve key portfolio metrics, including approval rates, activation, processing volume, attrition, fraud and chargeback performance, reserve exposure, and net revenue yield. Identify opportunities to improve profitability through pricing, fees, authorization performance, and operational cost-to-serve while maintaining appropriate risk standards.
• Reporting & Risk Analytics — Establish and maintain operati